Meet the artist

Hannah Wooll

The characters that inhabit Woolls paintings appear quite pathetic creatures. Although they strike poses inspired by old masters, ceramic figurines, and vintage Hollywood glamour, they exist on the cusp of allure and beauty, somehow always falling short. There is something desperate about these creatures that seem unaware of their physical distortions. Their striking faces stare out wantonly, from beneath the outsized bows of malformed, dysfunctional bodies. They are forlorn yet showy creatures, steeped in pastiche, frivolity and contradiction. They evoke listlessness with the heavy monotony of life. Hopelessly moored by inactivity, they are caught in uncertainty, and victims of their own vanity.

These characters are almost becoming self-portraits, mirrors of my own disbelief, idleness, shyness, humour, aspiration, and pretence, a catalogue of characteristics that suggest human frailty. (Hannah Wool)

The process of making seems designed to render the subjects inadequate from conception. They are painted from small-scale models made by the artist and, as a result, can never appear convincingly real. The environment in which Wooll places these diminutive figures further highlights this unreality. Using artificial light, and often viewing her models from above, the artist has playful control over their constructed world. Sparsely populated sets are put together from materials such as paper, silk, clay and plastecine, all selected for their contrasting and evocative surfaces, which translate into the painted realm.

The transference of these models to painted image, and the enlarged scale, leave them indefinable, and slightly redundant. They dont seem so benign as to appear doll-like, yet are too stylised and roughly proportioned to be human.

Work by this artist