HANNAH ruth-DAVIES

Hannah Ruth-Davies was born in 1980, in Cambridge. After completing her art foundation there, she moved to Cornwall, where she did a BA(hons) in Fine Art at Falmouth College of Arts, graduating in 2002.

After falling in love with Cornwall and the sea, she has continued to live and paint here, living with her young family in Bude and exhibiting her work around the country. Her oil paintings explore the theme of reflections, and are inspired by reflections of the Cornish seascape and townscape in cafe windows. Hannah's work achieves a mysterious atmosphere by using transparent layers of oil paint, built up slowly, so that each layer is still visible on the canvas. On a glass surface, inside and outside are merged, mixing private and public spaces, and producing strange and surprising areas, where coffee cups and figures float through sea and sky. Images develop to the viewer only slowly, as it in a dream. Hannah's dreamlike reflections draw the eye in, mesmerizing in their simultaneous sense of movement and calming stillness.

All is in-between.

The reflection holds all images in unison.

Hannah's pure love of drawing and process are shown in her "light patches". An exploratory technique of bullding up layers of light on a canvas. Light filters through a window for a fleeting moment and is given a permanence in her drawing. A memory of a hazy impression, long forgotten. Hannah aims to leave the viewer with a sense of calm hope. The simple beauty of sunlight.

Hannah was recently selected for the Trinity Buoy Wharf drawing prize, RWA Open, Discerning Eye, Derwent Art Prize and won the BTA Painting Prize 2024.