Hannah Wilson

Hannah Wilson: My paintings begin as screenshots, and this was the first time that I’ve made works for an exhibition all sourced from one film—The King of Comedy by Martin Scorcese, which I ended up watching six times. The main two characters, Jerry Langford and Rupert Pupkin, stood out to me and became the subject matter for the whole show. They’re both so tightly wound in their own way, and the film never seems to offer any real moments of release. I wanted you to be able to feel this pent up pressure coming off of them when you were in the room, like a kind of push-pull where the paintings are pushing back out to you. 

 

What inspires me about Scorsese films links into what drives my own practice. There’s a real sense of urgency in how he shoots things, in the physical way that the camera is handled, and attention to detail, particularly in the films he was making at the time of The King of Comedy. It’s a very instinctual approach to filmmaking, and I approach making paintings in the same way, with physicality and detail being paramount. For how much goes on in his films, they are actually very simple. There’s nothing there that isn’t absolutely necessary, which is something I strive for in my own work.

 

I go through phases of fixation with different actors. In 2022, I was painting a lot of Joaquin Phoenix because I’ve always connected with his work, and at the moment I keep returning to Robert De Niro. One of the most recurring leading men in my practice is Adam Sandler. I first started painting Sandler when I became very interested in the director Paul Thomas Anderson, and was working my way through all of his films. As part of my MFA show at the Glasgow School of Art, I made three paintings of his character Barry from Punch Drunk Love. I was really drawn to him in that film. In particular, something about the physical emblem of his suit acts as a barrier to the outside world—which is similar to the suit of Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy. Barry’s character shares personal qualities with Pupkin too—someone who seems very contained but will suddenly burst. It’s comical, but there’s also a desperation to each of these roles that strikes a chord in me.

There is a moment in You Were Never Really Here by Lynne Ramsay, who is another one of my all-time favorite directors. It’s a scene where Joaquin Phoenix’s character is lying on his kitchen floor with a man he just shot as an act of revenge, who is now slowly dying. While they’re laying there, the radio starts playing the song “I’ve Never Been to Me” by Charlene. As the song comes in, they start to sing along together, and in the final swell of the chorus, they grasp hands really tightly. Just something about it, the camera focused on their hands, and then suddenly it clicked back to the plot and the man on the floor is dead. It’s a powerful and bizarre moment that I return to again and again.

 

In terms of comfort films, one of my favorites that never changes is Billy Elliot. I’ve loved it since I was a teenager, and looking at it now, there are a lot of seeds for what themes were to come later in my work. You’re observing masculinity and this penting up of emotion that needs to be let out. To quote an in-joke I have with myself, I call it the “Billy Elliot to Lynne Ramsay pipeline.”

 

It isn’t something that I can predict, because it’s such a spontaneous feeling that I’m waiting for. I would say the closest thing I could relate it to is moments of cracking open. I look at characters who are very internal, with lots bubbling under the surface, and there’ll be a moment where they’ll slip or there’s a crack in that facade. It can be as simple as a tilt of the head or how a body is held, but I feel it when I see it. The work is then distilling that moment of tension and laboring over it with paint.

 

The physical quality of the film screen is also something I keep in mind when painting. My compositions are fairly simple, and I use the material qualities of oil paint to create depth, rather than adding detail in a more traditional way. Fields of lumpy color are carved into by line, hemming things in. When you view a cinema screen, you are observing a vast surface plane of color. Your eye moves across it and pulls it into focus. How would you feel if you had your nose right up to a cinema screen? It wouldn’t make sense, right? I want to keep that magical element, where nothing feels quite still.

At the time of Poor Sap, I had just begun painting the backs of heads more consistently. I knew it was something I was interested in exploring as a focal point for the show. I was looking at male characters who sabotaged themselves and didn’t want help, they just wanted to stay in that space and feel sorry for themselves. I was interested in that combination because they’re resisting being viewed; they don’t want to be observed. I love painting the backs of heads, but I also think it has a lot to offer from a viewer's perspective. It’s more elusive. To be met with a facial expression immediately reveals a lot more and can leave you at a dead end.

 

There’s lots to say about it! The fact that the works I make are oil paintings is something I care deeply about. The history of oil painting, but also the physical qualities of it. One of the things I love most is how well the thickness of it works for my practice. In the first stages of a painting, I mix massive amounts of paint and leave the colors to sit on the palette. My paintings are made in layers over a number of days, and as the paint sits, it thickens and develops a skin. I like to feel that a painting is a living thing. The consistency is always changing, and it’s unpredictable how the paint will act from one day to the next. There’s something bodily about it.

 

When I started my MFA, it was late 2020, and the studio days were limited to one day a week at first, due to the pandemic, and then none at all, so that one day held a lot of pressure. There was a day I went in and didn’t know what to do, so I painted from a screenshot I had taken on a whim. It was something I had thought about doing for a long time but never allowed myself to try. 

 

When the studio was closed, I was watching more films, and I found that the more I did it, the more these male characters kept cropping up. Historically, my favorite films have always been essentially character studies of these kinds of men, so it made sense. I like to try things out and then follow what feels good, so this is what I’m doing for now, but that’s not to say it’s what I’ll always do.

 

In the last few years, I have been taking steps to explore my identity as a trans-masculine person. That opened up a lot of thinking for me, and I can feel at times—as I’m sure many artists do—that my works can be masquerading self portraits. It was something I was thinking about when painting the three Adam Sandlers for my MFA show. It clicked that this was something I was observing in myself and trying to work through. There’s a relationship in the work to my position with masculinity—how it feels to perform that role and not quite succeed, or just simply not feel good enough.

Maybe I’m just pushing my own failure agenda, but it’s a privilege to fail. Maintaining an art practice, you need to feel comfortable making something that’s not very good. You have to feel like you’re allowed to do that, you’re allowed to fail multiple times in order to succeed, and it’s not a waste of time. It’s the same with seeing exhibitions and accessing galleries, it needs to be open to everyone. Free access to museums was invaluable to me in my formative years, and shaped so much of who I am. Art is so inherently personal that there needs to be an option for anybody to see works and form their own taste. How boring would it be if there were only a small in-crowd of voices who could be heard?

I haven’t for a long time! In my undergrad, I cultivated a very fast method of painting, which is something I still do but apply differently. I thought finishing a painting in a day was the only way to harness that specific energy. As time has gone on, I’ve realized that, actually, to do a painting in a day, I wasn’t making my best work, and I wasn’t making anything properly considered.

 

How it’s developed over time is that I have that same feeling of urgency, but instead I’ll attack a painting for a couple of hours, and then I’ll come back the next day and I’ll attack it again. It’s better in terms of letting the paint on the palette evolve, to get a skin and all of that, but also to really build it up on the canvas. Practically, I can maintain that high level of energy when I’m working on something in short bursts as opposed to one long shift. I’ll generally work on a few paintings at a time so I can move across them and apply that energy to each one.

 

Contrary to popular UK opinion, l liked growing up in Milton Keynes. I was always drawing, it was just something I did. I used to draw celebrities, and then I would spend lunchtimes copying characters from manga books in the school canteen. As I got older, I would copy paintings by painters I liked, and then I would paint those painters. I remember the first painting I did that was my own, not something for school, was a portrait of Francis Bacon with acrylics. It was just his face really close up, and he had a very pink, hammy quality—I think my dad’s still got it.

 

Milton Keynes influenced me in lots of ways because it is a very peculiar place. It’s a new town that was built in 1967, and everything is very spaced out, so you’re restricted to where you can get to by bus. One of the main things my friends and I would do on the weekend was go to the cinema and see whatever was on. I saw a real plethora of movies—to this day, I will watch anything, and I do think my interest in film was informed by that.

 

I felt a bit like an alien when I started art school. The first term of my first year, I did photography, and it does make some sense looking back at those works now. I would create these scenes with myself as the lone figure, which referenced the language of film. There wasn’t much painting going on at Goldsmiths at the time, at least that I could see, and it was obvious my heart wasn’t in it with what I was making. I had a really great tutor who eventually took me aside and told me if I wanted to paint, I should just do it. I did, and soon after I stumbled across some small works by Chantal Joffe in a group show. They were small paintings from photographs which were loose and messy, but contemporary, like no paintings I’d seen before. 

 

The lighter topics would be looking at characters who are quite pathetic. Figures who don’t help themselves and have childish outbursts. For example, if you look at some of Adam Sandler’s characters, there’s a deep well of sadness that he sort of flops about in. The heavier end would be a darker mental state. An existential kind of a listlessness, a not feeling good enough, which is just the other side of the same coin.

 

My show Last Dance at Grove in 2023 drew heavily from the film Aftersun by Charlotte Wells. Through that film, I was thinking a lot about specific moments from my own personal history. Painting has always been an outlet for me to interrogate parts of myself I find difficult to reconcile with. It’s challenging because you can pull context from something that is so personal, but it's not something that can necessarily be read. I think because it's such an internal process, you just wonder if any trace of it is left in the work for the viewer.

I think what’s so interesting about Her isn’t that the love interest is AI, that element of the film always felt unimportant to me. For me, it’s Theodore’s ability to form this connection and project so much, to be so invested, and to have a really human connection with something that he will never be able to reach out and touch. As intelligent as Samantha is, he is the one making this relationship real. I think his relationship in that film feels similar to how you view a painting—you bring your own stuff to it, you meet it with your own context, and then that's how you relate to it, you fill in those gaps yourself. That’s what I’m interested in—filling in those gaps.

 

There are small moments found in the physical act of painting. There’ll be little mistakes I can’t control, or I’ll happen to use a different brush because the one I want is dirty, and the brush that I end up using creates an interesting effect that I couldn’t anticipate. My research process is also driven by spontaneity, as the initial screenshots I take are entirely dependent on a fleeting feeling. It becomes laborious. I return to these moments again and again to make drawings and watch films on repeat, but that initial moment that strikes me is something I can’t predict. From there, it’s being open to mistakes happening and not being afraid to let the material lead if it needs to.

I’m in the middle of a big painting of Robert De Niro. Some compositions are more evasive, but this one was immediately clear. Otherwise, I’ve been watching lots of films and drawing. I watched Jonathan Glazer’s film, Birth, for the first time last week, and it hasn’t left my mind since. 

 

The last painting I completed was actually of Philip Guston’s hand from a documentary. It was an off-the-cuff one, a small painting, and I love the visual impact of holding his hand in such a close crop. He’s also holding a cigarette, and I don’t smoke, which I was convinced would be detectable in the final piece, but I think I got away with it.

 

I’ll be continuing my research, watching lots of films and painting what feels good. Also failing, of course, if I’m lucky.