Hannah Lindo Exhibit at The Mercer Gallery

The Mercer Gallery is pleased to host Garden City Community College class of 2015 alumni Hannah Lindo in the gallery for the first exhibition of 2023. Her comprehensive show “In My Room” features new work after her graduate school experience. Hannah is currently looking at spaces she knows well and feels most comfortable in, including scenes from her bedroom with hints of plant life. The exhibition will feature many large to small-scale works dealing with these uniquely personal themes. You can meet the artists at a closing reception on Friday, February 10th, from 3 pm to 4 pm, or with an artist’s workshop happening that morning from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm in the Joyce Fine Arts building, room 1413.

Hannah Lindo was born and raised in Garden City, Kansas, where she earned her Visual Arts associate degree. In 2017, she completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Fort Hays State University. Recently, Lindo completed her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Kansas. She is currently a Lecturer at the University of Kansas, where she teaches Painting and Drawing.

Throughout Hannah’s artwork, discovering has been an essential part of her discovery. She is using her surroundings and experiences as inspiration to depict internal emotions that are difficult to share. She is currently looking at spaces she knows well and feels most comfortable in, like her bedroom. Nature has been a consistent source of inspiration in her artwork, and recently, she noticed how nature surrounded her in the blooming floral patterns and plants collected in her bedroom. Inspiration has come from personal items like a duvet cover covered with elaborate blossoming flowers and tangling orange leaves that allow her eyes to get lost in an abundance of patterns, finding new things at each glance. Hannah’s bedding provides comfort at the most vulnerable times and remains in the background of my life. Always there to witness.

From painting trinkets that bring a smirk to the artist’s face to organic plant life, Hannah Lindo paints with a passion for life, telling an autobiographical narrative of the artist. Still, Life objects are used to represent memories of people she loves. She constructs exaggerated scenes in her bedroom, showing the interaction between never-changing objects and living beings like herself, plants, and of course, the cat. Color is used to heighten hidden emotions within the narrative. Often, gradients of color shift across the surface to signify that any situation or emotion can change with time. As Hannah works on this group of paintings, they will evolve as items, moments, and experiences grow and change over time through the patterns and trinkets she acquires.

The materiality of Hannah’s artwork is crucial to her because oil paint contains life and memory. The surfaces of her paintings have amassed many layers of paint; beneath the surface, previous colors and gestures layer to show the history of its making. Her unique brushstroke is immortalized within the painted body, displaying the artist’s hand and way of visually thinking. Time is shared through thick layers of paint, and creating history on the canvas shows the work it takes to make her masterpieces.

The Mercer Gallery is open Monday through Wednesday, from 9 AM to 4 PM, Thursdays from 9 AM to 10 PM, and Fridays from 9 am until 4 pm. If you would like information, please contact Gallery Director Michael Knutson. At [email protected].