Today we’d like to introduce you to Hannah Aaron.
Hannah, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Absolutely. Growing up, I was a pretty socially awkward kid. I collected moths, had a pet chicken, and would style and bury my Barbies – kind of like a Barbie Mortician. So naturally, I struggled making friends. And like many artists, I used drawing as my escape. When I was twelve, a neighbor paid for me and her daughter to take a few months of art lessons. This class was crucial to the development of my skill set, as many of the techniques I learned as a twelve-year-old, were lessons many people learn in college.
Towards the end of my high school career, I had a spiritual experience with Jesus. It was like I had been living in a world of sepia, and my world was transformed into living color (this is an important detail to remember later in the story). During my senior year, I submitted a watercolor portrait into the 2008 AP College Board Exhibition. They selected my work out of 36,000 submissions and the exhibition traveled across the country for next year. From this moment I had a gut feeling telling me, “I could actually be an artist for the rest of my life”. In the following eleven years, I started a free-lance painting business, received my undergraduate degree in Drawing and Painting at the University of North Texas. Currently, I teaching painting at the University of North Texas and at Lifestyle Christianity University, while finishing my master’s degree at the University of North Texas.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
My work is primarily about re-claiming my femininity and narratives from childhood. For me, painting is a form of therapy. Like I mentioned in the previous paragraph, Jesus’ love for me changed many of my perspectives, including experiences of childhood trauma and neglect. Now, I feel empowered to see it as something that shaped me, but ultimately does not define me. Many of my oil paintings depict ballet slippers, referring to the nine years I performed in ballet. Ballet was consequently colored by my background and resulted in an experience of clinical perfectionism and isolation, which I unknowingly carried into my adulthood. To revoke this crippling mentality, I paint boxing gloves and running sneakers. The symbolism of the boxing gloves is an act re-writing my narrative, from victim to victor. For each ballet slipper painting, I respond with a boxing glove painting.
The application of my paintings includes areas of refinement, as well as expressive line, dry brush and thick impasto. My work includes paintings from still-life imagery and photographs, large-scale figurative work, wallpaper installations, printmaking and sometimes sculpture.
The stereotype of a starving artist scares away many potentially talented artists from pursuing art – any advice or thoughts about how to deal with the financial concerns an aspiring artist might be concerned about?
Set at least 4-5 hours on your schedule to focus on your creativity. Even if it’s only for a couple of days a week outside of your full-time job. Anytime you can make a spectacle of yourself to engage people, opportunities will come your way. It could be something like painting at an event, a mall, or an online stream. And lastly, stop giving away your work for free. You are worth more than that. Someone who sees the value of your work will pay what it’s worth.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
My thesis show opens Saturday, February 1st, at the Umbrella Gallery in Deep Ellum! It will be up from February until the end of March. This is a great way to support me. If you’d like to follow my Instagram for updates, my handle is hannahaaronart.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hannahaaronstudio.com
- Instagram: hannahaaronart
Image Credit:
Hannah Aaron
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