The
Artist
Hannah Shergold is inspired by the natural world.
Stand back from her paintings and it's clear to see she has an understanding of anatomy and movement. Her animals leap and dive, they stampede and saunter... they draw you into the painting with no distraction.
But look closer and the thick layers of impasto paint and geometric interruptions are deconstructed by your own eyes, drawing you through a network of woven layers, iridescent colour and hidden surprises.
Painting the
natural world
...unnaturally.
"Being self-taught, my process came about by happy accident.
I'm a perfectionist at heart and my work always felt tight - a painting would lose its life and fluidity in the pursuit of anatomical accuracy. I hated it.
In frustration, I took a scraping knife to a canvas, dragging the tool through thick, impasto paint, intending to dispose of the piece rather than to improve it.
By
happy
accident
But something magical happened.
The textures had merged and morphed in unexpected ways. Colours had been dragged through each other, textures pushed around the canvas.
It was a way of unpicking 'correctness', relaxing the painting and embracing serendipity.
I was hooked."
Hannah has received no formal art training beyond secondary school. Instead her career path ventured towards the sciences and she followed a passion for animals to study veterinary medicine, before joining the British Army to fly helicopters. It wasn't until 2018 that she returned to her true creative calling when she left the Armed Forces.
Hannah uses her anatomical understanding to play with movement in her compositions.
"Without sound anatomical foundations the painting would fall apart. I need the viewer to truly understand what it is they're looking at before I interrupt the form and push the colours into the unexpected."
"Without
sound anatomical foundations, the painting would fall apart."
Whether painting animals or portraiture, Hannah finds new ways to deconstruct her paintings. From ethereal, fluid-acrylic backgrounds to the play of light on gold leaf, she weaves surprises into her layers, relying on feel and intuition for colour choices and compositional decisions.
Paint it,
Break it,
Fix it,
Balance it.
"I love to test the boundaries of what this process can achieve. How much can I take away? How daring can I be with colour. It's a fine balance."
From the early days of her full-time art career Hannah has been passionate about giving to charity. Through auctioning selected works and giving a percentage of her sales, Hannah has now raised over £450,000.
She is an ambassador for Tusk, the African wildlife conservation charity for which Prince William is Royal Patron, and in 2025 she had the honour of painting Rolling Stones legend Ronnie Wood. The portrait was auctioned at her solo exhibition on The Mall in London with Ronnie in attendance, raising an incredible £65,000.
Art for
good.
