Rust & Bloom – works by Hannah Maybank

About

An exploration into the subject of decay and renewal through paint and flora.

We always yearn for those things that we can't quite capture. There is great beauty in loss and impermanence. This can be personified by a flower teetering on the 'perfection' of full bloom only to tip over into deterioration and transition.

Material presence is of great importance within the paintings. By making my own watercolours I relish the pigments that move and react with one another beyond my control. An example of this is verdigris that seeps from brilliant emerald green back to the copper colour of its origin. Cast iron powder blooms with rust as the seasons change.

In my acrylic and latex works, paint is layered again and again over pockets of latex – wrapping the picture up to produce it’s own ‘rings of a tree’. These painted layers are then ruptured to reveal the composition and lifespan of the piece as it breaks out of or dies back from the surface.

By using the physicality of paint, repetition, reaction and the subject of flora these works hold an implied or actual ‘life’ of their own beyond completion.