Hannah van Bart
You look not only with your eyes but also with your senses, with everything inside you, equipped with all your experiences. How cold it is, how humid the air is, how the light falls.
Hannah van Bart (1963, Netherlands) is known for her enigmatic paintings that occupy the liminal space between figuration and abstraction. Her distinctive works feature isolated figures—humans and animals alike—depicted in ambiguous settings with a dreamlike quality. Van Bart's singular visual language, characterized by sharp outlines, layered brushwork, and repeated patterns, creates portraits of remarkable psychological depth. Rather than merely capturing physical likenesses, she excavates her subjects' inner worlds, rendering the intangible emotional and spiritual dimensions visible. Drawing inspiration from Dutch Old Masters' golden light and expressionism's gestural freedom, Van Bart constructs settings from imagination and feelings from memory, creating works that feel simultaneously familiar and elusive. Her figures—men, women, bears, wolves, and horses—suggest movement through their postures, while symbolic details hint at hidden narratives and interior lives.
