I am a British painter based in North London, working predominantly in oil.
My work moves between observation and abstraction, beginning with landscape, sea and flowers and developing through memory, gesture and the physical act of painting.
Artist Statement
I begin with things I know physically: weather moving across land, the edge of the sea, flowers gathered and brought into the studio. Drawing, observation and remembered places often provide the initial structure, but they are rarely instructions for the finished painting.
Once I begin to work, the material itself becomes equally important.
Paint is laid down, dragged, wiped away, scratched into and worked over. Forms emerge and disappear; areas that initially seemed important may be obscured almost entirely, while an accidental mark can alter the direction of the whole painting. I tend to establish mass, tone and rhythm quickly before allowing the process to become slower and more considered.
For landscapes and seascapes I often work from a restricted palette, using relationships between colour to establish atmosphere and depth rather than relying on descriptive colour. In the floral paintings the palette opens out, but the underlying concerns remain much the same.
I am particularly interested in memory and what happens to an image once the specifics of a place or subject begin to fall away. A horizon can become little more than a division of tone; flowers can become marks, interruptions and passages of colour; a landscape can gradually move towards abstraction while retaining the sensation that first made me want to paint it.
Across the work I return repeatedly to thresholds: between the observed and remembered, stillness and movement, presence and disappearance.
I want the finished surface to retain evidence of its making, recording decisions in colour, movement and texture until the painting begins to hold a history of its own.
Biography
Hannah Ivory Baker is a British painter based in London. She has worked professionally as an artist for fourteen years, developing a practice centred on oil painting and moving between landscape, seascape, floral subjects and abstraction.
Her paintings have been exhibited throughout the UK in galleries, art fairs and selected open exhibitions. These have included exhibitions with the New English Art Club, Royal Society of British Artists, and Royal Institute of Oil Painters, alongside London Art Fair, Affordable Art Fair Battersea and Hampstead, Start Art Fair at Saatchi Gallery and Fresh Art Fair.
Her work is held in private collections in the UK and internationally, and she has worked with private collectors and interior designers on individual acquisitions and commissioned works. Her practice ranges from intimate observational studies to large-scale paintings and commissions measuring several metres.
Alongside her studio practice, Hannah has worked within the contemporary gallery sector for more than a decade. She became director of Highgate Contemporary Art in 2015, curating exhibitions and working closely with artists, collectors and designers. This experience has run alongside, rather than apart from, her own painting practice and has given her a long-standing engagement with the ways paintings are made, exhibited and lived with.
She works from her studio at The Chocolate Factory in Wood Green, North London.