Hannah Coale

Artist Statement:
Every season except usually summer, (when the bones of things get trounced by green and leaves), I see things while walking in the woods.
 
My Painted Wall Sculpture does not feel abstract to me, it feels like the things I see when I walk. That is, the elements that collect where things fall on, across and against each other, rot, pile up, have holes, break and entwine.
 
The woods show me accidental structures that delight my mind and force the beauty of the haphazard on me.

So I go into the studio with cardboard, water, clamps and paint and using the most basic tools, slop around until something of the puzzle begins to emerge as fact.
 
I don’t know how the humor occurs, but it helps that I don’t feel the weighty importance of what I’m making. Instead my vision is local, eccentric and filled with the delight that I find in the Wissahickon Valley .

About the figurative work:
 
I have always worked on watercolor drawings and low relief figures from life. It's an ongoing practice that has sustained me through all of my abstract work. I was trained very classically and I do miss working figuratively sometimes, but the Wall Sculptures consistently keep me interested and challenged.