Trish Hanna

Iam a mixed media artist with a special interest in photography. Recently I have found it is not the making of a perfectly sharp image that engages me so much as photo-impressionism, a form of abstraction. Over the past year I have explored the cyanotype process, one of the earliest forms of photography, dating from 1852, that can be used to develop either finely detailed images, such as blueprints, or very loose, abstract images, such as the one I’ve made here. Cyanotype medium is created from two chemicals which, when mixed, are activated by UV light. Results can be predictable, or very unpredictable, and are subject to many variables.

As the daughter of a wounded WWII veteran, my childhood was disrupted by my father’s PTSD, then known as “shell shock.” While reading the archetypes, the Wounded Child resonated, both in my own life and his. At the time he enlisted he was 18, not much more than a child himself, not even old enough to vote. In Memoriam I use the photograph of my father’s Royal Canadian Air Force graduating regiment (1943) in an interpretation of Remembrance Day, November 11th. Now nearly 80 years on from the time of the photograph, compassion has led me to forgiveness. I see these young men in a moment of innocence, with youthful enthusiasm, a sense of adventure, answering the call to arms, and no concept of the physical and mental trauma they will experience, or how it will affect their lives, and the lives of their families. Results that were both predictable and very unpredictable.

Memoriam 2022 16” x 14” Mixed media textile NFS thannaarts@gmail.com