GUS Visiting Artist Series: Hanna Taylor
On display in the Upper School Gallery
Hanna Taylor Marino is a New England-based painter who works out of her studio in Ipswich, MA. She earned her BFA in painting from the University of Connecticut in 2013. Her work has been featured in exhibitions, publications, and is hung in private and corporate collections throughout the US and abroad. She is a mother to two wild and wonderful ladies under the age of five.
Artist Statement
“I paint out of an urgency to transcribe. Color is how I experience much of life: a moment of good light, changing weather, a melancholy day that still fills my chest with gratitude, a cobweb clearing first sip of coffee, dirt on my hands, different light moving across the same walls. Color is nostalgic, it is how I place my memories in context. Color is aspirational; a constant and addictive pursuit. Sometimes I paint with a bursting energy to get the color out of my mind and onto a surface. Other times the colors fight once outside my head and I have to wrestle with them on paper to find balance. Repetitive shapes, texture and layers all build on each other and push the work forward. Recognizable forms along with loose symbols of my own interpretation remain visible in the composition.
As my children grow and the grip of early motherhood is loosening I am pulled toward painting even more. Two conflicting tethers, it is a burden and a privilege to be both mother and a painter. Recently I am working to incorporate more narrative into the work. I have been exploring the ways that a specific scene, painted either from life or memory can direct the color and energy in a painting. The moments of exhaustion and rage and repetition and humor are interesting to me as a subject and using these focused narratives gives the process room for new color combinations and forms to show up unexpectedly.
Though a moment of color or an amusing scene from my life are usually the inspiration for jumping in, once I begin a painting, rather than working from an image or plan, each decision informs the next. I aim to translate my experience in the world, and attempt to connect to someone else’s experience. “