Hannah Flowers Artist Statement

Like many a desperate romantic I’ve always felt a great affinity with the Walter Pater quote; ‘To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.’ This exhibition is born of my relentless pursuit to keep the flame alive.

I rather fancied the best way to go about this would be to withdraw from society, spending my mornings, noons and eves revelling in radiant colour, immersing myself in art and nature, following my flights of fancy to their bitter ends. To allow myself a reckless excess of passion.

In this age of artifice, I cherish the old crafts and the human touch. Each painting is a fragment of one’s life offered up. The physicality of the materials, the deep roots and ancient origins of the techniques, the glowing opulence of the paint itself, moves me. Let me count the ways.

I have within my possession a genuine vermillion made of poison cinnabar, as in the era of Rubens, its firey depths kiss the rosy cheeks and ruby lips of fair maids.
Hewn from the Scottish mountains near my abode- amber ochre, a golden treasure that ignites the glow in the eye of a harlot.

I covet a pigment known as mermaid egg, stolen from the cliffs at Whitby- the very same Whitby that Dracula touched down on our shores. This hue is clearly imbued with bygone horrors and I use it to comb the fur on the backs of winged beasts.
I have an ivory black that glitters like the eyes of a mad woman.

I have a true lapis lazuli- the colour of an oasis glimpsed after a week in the unforgiving embrace of the khorasan desert, teetering on the brink of delirium. True cobalt violet graces my collection, its sheen otherworldly, its origin deadly to mortals. Alizarin crimson deep as the finest wine, umber rich like chocolate. Viridian lies upon my canvas as emeralds lie upon the breast of a queen.

I own one of the final tubes of burnt Sienna from the now closed mt Amiata mines in Tuscany. Given its coordinates, it is likely to be from the very same magical well that graces the works of Caravaggio and Titian. My brushes? Only the finest, each lovingly crafted by the illustrious lady Rosemary herself. My canvas? The unparalleled elegance of Belgian linen, naturally.

These paintings were birthed at my home, a ramshackle cottage by a castle in a moss choked forest, not far from where a young Mary Shelley first dreamed of a monster. Whilst maidens and beasts are dredged from the depths of my subconscious, my small studio brims with very real fruits, flowers and velveteen fabrics. In the spring I gather Narcissus and Calla Lily from my garden. In the summer, sunflowers and green carnations. With the windows thrown open, the intoxicating scents of clematis and honeysuckle engulf my home, infusing the space and stoking my mind to ecstasy. Heavy grapes and soft peaches repose in fine blue china and golden chalices. I lovingly stroke oil drenched pigment onto creamy linens, the juice of summer fruits dripping down my chin, the sounds of birds singing through the open window gently contrasting with Mozart's Lacrimosa as, delightedly sobbing, I dream of creating fantastical realms so mesmerizing you could climb inside them. Reality and imagination intertwine in a heady melody.

But I digress. Lest my esteemed reader think me the hedonistic heathen I occasionally embody, please allow me to reassure you that I was also appropriately tormented. Why, I traversed the ninth circle of hell to bring you this show!
After a delightful spring and summer and a warm autumn filled with mulled wine, crackling hearths and curled cats, the winter of ’24 descended upon me like a black cloud. An icy coldness seeped into my studio, befouling the air and congealing my beautiful pigments into heinous clots, dribbling sickeningly like burst pustules. Sleep abandoned me. I grew ill of mind and body, decrepit, though still a young woman. I felt my spleen grow cold and harden like some ancient stone. My glittering golds appeared to me as the jaundiced yellow of the dying, my radiant violet dull as a bruised corpse. A bitterness that was more than despair tore at my entrails.

The imposing moon of the north, still aglow at midday, a sin against nature for one born in southern climes such as I. Morn came and went and came, and brought no day. Lamenting the desolation of my ravaged palette I gazed up at the hateful orb and through my tears of anguish it became two. Like the eyes of a great winged beast glaring down upon the abomination I had wrought in my folly.

Its gaze lay heavy upon me turning my once nimble fingers clumsy with a leaden weight. Wishing to divest myself of this misery I turned to my blue china and golden chalices hoping to stoke up the flame which by now lay in embers at my feet. Alas! The vessels lay still and lacklustre, their icy surfaces biting cruelly at my hopeful fingers. Cautiously I peered into their depths. A foul odour assailed my nostrils, as, to my horror, I saw they contained no hope, only the putrid rot of decay.

All around me the shadowy shapes of velvet draped canvas loomed, the joyous summer works. Not wishing to befoul their numinous surfaces with the insipid air I had left them safely sleeping in their velveteen sheaths. But now, such was my torment, I felt a great need to look upon their gentle warmth and feel the spirit of past joys heat my emaciated soul. Feeling revitalised at the very thought I threw back the drapery with a great flourish. Behold!

As many sets of eyes stared back at me, their brows by the despairing light wore an unearthly aspect. I heard an ominous sound. Faint at first, though by slow degrees, gathering to a menacing growl- the great beast in the sky! A sudden crack of lightning rent the air illuminating my stricken face. I spun frantically looking from one face to the next, but surely not! It's a trick of this dread moonlight that makes the fair eyes appear as the stoney glower of a gorgon. It must be the tears stinging my own seared eyes that makes that once cherubic mouth appear to sneer at me in taunting mockery. I imagined I felt the whisper of a rancid breath at the nape of my neck, my caged heart beat a painful tattoo upon its prison walls. A voice, low and demonic spoke close by my ear, ‘are you satisfied, miserable wretch? Look upon my face and despair.’

Oh cruel goddess! Why hath thou forsaken me? What foul sacrament has brought this evil upon me? Was a life lived for love and beauty truly so sinful as to doom me to this loathed existence? Then, a dim sound, like the scrabbling of plague ridden vermin behind mouldering walls. It was coming from the paintings themselves! I thought I perceived a writhing, a roiling, the sickening shuddering of maggots beneath loosened flesh. Acid bile scorched my throat, my maidens! My lady loves, lights of my life, ‘Dead! All dead!’ I cried out, I swooned, I tumbled prostrate to the floor, felled by the violence of my horror.

I awoke some days later as though from a dream, which was not all a dream. A sparse sunbeam played across my face, dappled by the branches of a yew. Through the open window, I saw the first subtle signs of spring, the phallic buds of narcissus pushing through the moist earth. As, tentatively, I arose and began brewing a strong black coffee, my cat companionably circling my legs, I pondered what in the devil I was doing with my life. I thought of Baudelaires comment that ‘immoderate love of form can lead to monstrous and unknown disorders.’ At least it’s a damned sight better than reading the news or getting a real job, I consoled myself. As I sipped the dark brew, ambrosia of the gods, the swaying sun alighted, sparkling, on a tube of cobalt violet in the corner of the room. It’s brilliance thawed my spleen and I felt a gem-like flame kindle within the depths of my bile, restoring my humours.

While this journey has been extremely personal to me it is my fondest wish that this show bring delight to my fellow aesthetes, hopeless romantics, old souls and decadent libertines. ~ Hannah Flowers