Hana Carpenter’s work stems from a fascination with the parallels between painting and the imagery, investigative technology and language of the human and natural sciences.
Sonography is used across disciplines such as archeology, oceanography and anatomy to ‘see’ beneath a surface. It transmits sound waves into the area being examined until they hit a boundary between tissues and bounce back, translating kinetic energy into an image.
Carpenter utilises the fluidity of paint, linseed oil and water to intuitively build and erase organic form. The energy expended by the body in mark making is captured; suspended movement, a dance term that refers to the momentary stillness after force is dispersed, speaks of the artist’s process and resulting imagery.
Sonography is used across disciplines such as archeology, oceanography and anatomy to ‘see’ beneath a surface. It transmits sound waves into the area being examined until they hit a boundary between tissues and bounce back, translating kinetic energy into an image.
Carpenter utilises the fluidity of paint, linseed oil and water to intuitively build and erase organic form. The energy expended by the body in mark making is captured; suspended movement, a dance term that refers to the momentary stillness after force is dispersed, speaks of the artist’s process and resulting imagery.
'Dispersion 1' (2021), acrylic and oil on canvas, framed with recycled rimu, 740 x 590 x 60mm.
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Hana Carpenter is a New Zealander of Scottish, Irish and Danish descent, ngāi te Tiriti te iwi. She lives in Te Awakairangi/Lower Hutt with her partner Samuel and their 4 children. Carpenter has been a finalist in the Wellington Regional Art Awards, the Walker and Hall Waiheke Art Awards, the NZ Painting and Printmaking Awards and the Wallace Awards. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam, Auckland University, and exhibits in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland and Pōneke/Wellington. website: hanacarpenter.com instagram: @hanacarpenter.hc |
Installation views from 'Suspended Movement', 13 November - 8 December 2021.
'Suspension 5', (2021), oil on board, framed with recycled cedar, 350 x 350 mm. Sold.
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'Modulation 1' (2021), acrylic and oil on canvas, framed with recycled cedar, 950 x 1250 x 60mm.
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'Modulation 2' (2021), acrylic and oil on canvas, framed with recycled cedar, 950 x 1250 x 60mm.
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Installation details from 'Suspended Movement', 13 November - 8 December 2021.
'Modulation 3' (2021), acrylic and oil on canvas, framed with recycled cedar, 950 x 1250 x 60mm.
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'Modulation 4' (2021), acrylic and oil on canvas, framed with recycled cedar, 950 x 1250 x 60mm.
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Interview Transcript with Hana Carpenter and
Nina Dyer (Exhibition Curator & Gallery Manager)
Nina Dyer (Exhibition Curator & Gallery Manager)
Nina: Your paintings make incredible use of oil and its unique material qualities – the sense of depth beyond the surface of the canvas, the diffusion of light, and the translucency that you’ve achieved through blending is really breath-taking. Could you share the inspiration for this effect?
Hana: I initially only used water based mediums. Gretchen Albrecht came to my studio at Elam for a critique session, and she said ‘your paintings are crying out for oils!’. I still didn't listen for a few years but she was right. My favourite painting of all time is her work ‘Sea of Faith’ which is privately owned but I saw it in a show at Te Papa once, it’s actually acrylic 😂 It’s never far from my consciousness when I’m painting.
N: You mentioned that for a few years you taught Renaissance Art History in high school; do you think that studying the development of oil painting in this period informed your technique? Or do you see this tradition as entirely distinct from your use of oils?
H: Definitely yes, I use traditional linseed oil, I don't use any solvent based mediums. I love the chiaroscuro and the translucency used by artists like Rembrandt and Caravaggio: dramatic, dark work. I'm mesmerised by the modulation of light that those artists achieved.
N: I’m especially drawn to the larger pieces…no matter what people say about painting, it remains to be a medium that can have such a visceral, quasi-spiritual effect when viewed in person. Particularly on this scale. Perhaps it’s a result of being in lockdown and becoming more accustomed to viewing art online, but I’ve found that paintings like these can still have this effect through a screen. That’s pretty powerful.
H: I’ve never been to Europe so I have only seen works by Rembrandt and Caravaggio via photographs. Some of my students were like ‘yeah miss I saw that painting in Venice in the school holidays”. But for me, looking at artwork digitally in a dark lecture theatre, that sort of hushed, ethereal quality of seeing these images projected at scale out of the darkness, was still powerful.
N: Despite the oil medium being so essential to the character of these paintings, it’s funny because they remind me of something non-painterly that took a while to put my finger on. You mentioned an interest in the spiritualist photography made in the 1800s, and I think this may be the latent association I’m getting. Could you tell us more about these?
H: In the Victorian era, the potential of photography and the newly discovered X-ray to visualise invisible phenomena influenced artists like Edvard Munch. Ectoplasm was the term given to the ethereal substance supposedly emitted from the body during a spiritualist trance. It was widely visualised through hoax photography. The term is borrowed from biology: it is the viscous outer layer of a cell, which I love.
The qualities of early photographs are amazing, especially pinhole images, the blur, the light, the tones. Artists began to exploit the possibilities of the medium that were initially thought of as technical limitations or mistakes, kind of early special effects. The photographic process itself was seen as magical, it still is. The recent development of artificial intelligence that uses millions of photographic images to create kinetic artwork is mind-blowing. Artists like Refik Anadol are pioneering this space. Some of my favourite artists are photographers: Wolfgang Tillmans, Joyce Campbell, Andrew Bec.
N: And speaking of technology, something which informs your work is sonography…
H: Humans are on a constant quest to ‘see’ things that aren’t visible to the eye. We have created technology that utilises natural phenomena like sound to visualise things. I'm fascinated by imagery that is created by sound or light or energy.
Sonography is used across scientific disciplines like archeology, oceanography and anatomy to ‘see’ beneath a surface. Ultrasound works by transmitting sound waves into the area being examined until they hit a boundary between tissues and bounce back, translating kinetic energy into an image.
This is particularly interesting to me because my 4 year old son was born with a hole in his heart, and I have become pretty familiar with looking at echocardiograms, or heart ultrasounds. They summarise for me everything we are talking about, the hush of a darkened hospital room is that same sense as viewing Renaissance paintings in a dark lecture theatre, seeing images come out of a machine that visualise things we can’t see in everyday life, we are removed from the visceral reality of things by a screen, and it's magical.
N: The titles of your recent works - Modulation, Suspension, Dispersion - are very evocative despite also being technical terms.
H: I’m interested in the parallels between the language and technology used in the natural and human sciences and painting. So many concepts have an application in the arts and the sciences - a word like dispersion or modulation - these are terms that apply to painting, but also to dance, theatre, music, and physics, chemistry and biology.
I like passive words like diffusion, where action has ceased, the end point of movement, energy has left and the evidence of movement remains - this is what the dance term suspended movement means. A word like percussion is very interesting to me because it is used across the arts and sciences. We probably associate it most with music, but it just means sound made by differing densities. For e.g., the skin of a drum, depth of water, tapping on anatomy surface to check for tumours.
The careers advisor at my high school tried to convince me to take Chemistry rather than all arts subjects, her rationale was that ‘paint has chemicals in it’. But it's true, the arts and sciences are interconnected, they all utilise natural phenomena to visualise things.
N: Are there other artists you look to with shared artistic or conceptual concerns?
H: Gretchen Albrecht who I’ve mentioned, also Judy Millar who was my lecturer at Elam. Mark Francis, his work 20 years ago based on cells and his current work resembles sound waves, and Terry Winters work since high school, my art teacher gave me his book, again never seen either of those artist’s work in real life😂 but they've had a massive influence. I love the work of contemporary painter Oliver Wagner. So it's fair to say I'm mostly influenced by digital representations of paintings that are inspired by natural phenomena, and how these phenomena are channeled through the prismatic and malleable qualities of paint.
N: Finally, do you have any projects after this in the pipeline?
H: My next solo show is at James Gilberd gallery in Courtenay Place in Wellington, he is a photographer and usually shows photography, he actually wrote a book on paranormal photography. I think this is a really interesting context for my work.
I’m also planning another show with Sam Dollimore, we had a show together last year, her work is fleshy and bodily and is created with massive energy output, we've found strong synergy between our work.
Also, a project next year at the Upper Hutt public art gallery, Whirinaki Whare Taonga, painting a large wall in the gallery. People can chat to me, and engage with the work physically as it is forming. I will be able to literally stretch my gestures/movements when painting, not constrained by studio space. My movements will be seen in real time as well as captured. This is something I want to pursue more.
Hana: I initially only used water based mediums. Gretchen Albrecht came to my studio at Elam for a critique session, and she said ‘your paintings are crying out for oils!’. I still didn't listen for a few years but she was right. My favourite painting of all time is her work ‘Sea of Faith’ which is privately owned but I saw it in a show at Te Papa once, it’s actually acrylic 😂 It’s never far from my consciousness when I’m painting.
N: You mentioned that for a few years you taught Renaissance Art History in high school; do you think that studying the development of oil painting in this period informed your technique? Or do you see this tradition as entirely distinct from your use of oils?
H: Definitely yes, I use traditional linseed oil, I don't use any solvent based mediums. I love the chiaroscuro and the translucency used by artists like Rembrandt and Caravaggio: dramatic, dark work. I'm mesmerised by the modulation of light that those artists achieved.
N: I’m especially drawn to the larger pieces…no matter what people say about painting, it remains to be a medium that can have such a visceral, quasi-spiritual effect when viewed in person. Particularly on this scale. Perhaps it’s a result of being in lockdown and becoming more accustomed to viewing art online, but I’ve found that paintings like these can still have this effect through a screen. That’s pretty powerful.
H: I’ve never been to Europe so I have only seen works by Rembrandt and Caravaggio via photographs. Some of my students were like ‘yeah miss I saw that painting in Venice in the school holidays”. But for me, looking at artwork digitally in a dark lecture theatre, that sort of hushed, ethereal quality of seeing these images projected at scale out of the darkness, was still powerful.
N: Despite the oil medium being so essential to the character of these paintings, it’s funny because they remind me of something non-painterly that took a while to put my finger on. You mentioned an interest in the spiritualist photography made in the 1800s, and I think this may be the latent association I’m getting. Could you tell us more about these?
H: In the Victorian era, the potential of photography and the newly discovered X-ray to visualise invisible phenomena influenced artists like Edvard Munch. Ectoplasm was the term given to the ethereal substance supposedly emitted from the body during a spiritualist trance. It was widely visualised through hoax photography. The term is borrowed from biology: it is the viscous outer layer of a cell, which I love.
The qualities of early photographs are amazing, especially pinhole images, the blur, the light, the tones. Artists began to exploit the possibilities of the medium that were initially thought of as technical limitations or mistakes, kind of early special effects. The photographic process itself was seen as magical, it still is. The recent development of artificial intelligence that uses millions of photographic images to create kinetic artwork is mind-blowing. Artists like Refik Anadol are pioneering this space. Some of my favourite artists are photographers: Wolfgang Tillmans, Joyce Campbell, Andrew Bec.
N: And speaking of technology, something which informs your work is sonography…
H: Humans are on a constant quest to ‘see’ things that aren’t visible to the eye. We have created technology that utilises natural phenomena like sound to visualise things. I'm fascinated by imagery that is created by sound or light or energy.
Sonography is used across scientific disciplines like archeology, oceanography and anatomy to ‘see’ beneath a surface. Ultrasound works by transmitting sound waves into the area being examined until they hit a boundary between tissues and bounce back, translating kinetic energy into an image.
This is particularly interesting to me because my 4 year old son was born with a hole in his heart, and I have become pretty familiar with looking at echocardiograms, or heart ultrasounds. They summarise for me everything we are talking about, the hush of a darkened hospital room is that same sense as viewing Renaissance paintings in a dark lecture theatre, seeing images come out of a machine that visualise things we can’t see in everyday life, we are removed from the visceral reality of things by a screen, and it's magical.
N: The titles of your recent works - Modulation, Suspension, Dispersion - are very evocative despite also being technical terms.
H: I’m interested in the parallels between the language and technology used in the natural and human sciences and painting. So many concepts have an application in the arts and the sciences - a word like dispersion or modulation - these are terms that apply to painting, but also to dance, theatre, music, and physics, chemistry and biology.
I like passive words like diffusion, where action has ceased, the end point of movement, energy has left and the evidence of movement remains - this is what the dance term suspended movement means. A word like percussion is very interesting to me because it is used across the arts and sciences. We probably associate it most with music, but it just means sound made by differing densities. For e.g., the skin of a drum, depth of water, tapping on anatomy surface to check for tumours.
The careers advisor at my high school tried to convince me to take Chemistry rather than all arts subjects, her rationale was that ‘paint has chemicals in it’. But it's true, the arts and sciences are interconnected, they all utilise natural phenomena to visualise things.
N: Are there other artists you look to with shared artistic or conceptual concerns?
H: Gretchen Albrecht who I’ve mentioned, also Judy Millar who was my lecturer at Elam. Mark Francis, his work 20 years ago based on cells and his current work resembles sound waves, and Terry Winters work since high school, my art teacher gave me his book, again never seen either of those artist’s work in real life😂 but they've had a massive influence. I love the work of contemporary painter Oliver Wagner. So it's fair to say I'm mostly influenced by digital representations of paintings that are inspired by natural phenomena, and how these phenomena are channeled through the prismatic and malleable qualities of paint.
N: Finally, do you have any projects after this in the pipeline?
H: My next solo show is at James Gilberd gallery in Courtenay Place in Wellington, he is a photographer and usually shows photography, he actually wrote a book on paranormal photography. I think this is a really interesting context for my work.
I’m also planning another show with Sam Dollimore, we had a show together last year, her work is fleshy and bodily and is created with massive energy output, we've found strong synergy between our work.
Also, a project next year at the Upper Hutt public art gallery, Whirinaki Whare Taonga, painting a large wall in the gallery. People can chat to me, and engage with the work physically as it is forming. I will be able to literally stretch my gestures/movements when painting, not constrained by studio space. My movements will be seen in real time as well as captured. This is something I want to pursue more.