Mary Hanson

Mary Hanson spent her childhood on a sheep and wheat farm near a dry and dusty little town in the Australian outback. With few playmates and no distractions from the outside world, she absorbed the colours and lines within the boundaries of her horizons. A theme of isolation marks her enduring relationship with that stark landscape and each piece is infused with a sense of colour unique to those early experiences.

Artist Statement

I have always been captivated by the glow of precious metals so it’s no surprise that my medium is metallic leaf. As a child, I admired the beautiful iridescent shine on the backs of beetles who visited us like winged jewels on hot summer nights. I collected the shiny gold and coloured foil wrappers from chocolate and candies and kept them in a special box together with the ‘silver linings’ from abandoned cigarette packets. Years later, as a decorative artist, I found my niche in the traditional art of gilding, working with silver, gold and copper leaf. I became very familiar with the nuances of the fragile foil and happily discovered along the way that some of my ‘mistakes’ could now be employed as techniques.