Bryan Hanlon

Bryan Hanlon lives and works in rural Wiltshire, surrounded by the type of environment that has inspired his work. Bryan is widely regarded having enjoyed many successful exhibitions around the world, including Nature in Art, Gloucester, The Tryon and Swann, London, and the prestigious ‘Birds in Art’exhbition in Wisconsin, America. Artistic forays have taken him throughout Europe and America and into Africa, which inspired his magnificent book ‘Birds and Beasts Africa’, published by Swann Hill Press, Shrewsbury. Although birds remain an important subject and the initial source of inspiration, Bryan has also explored landscape, portraiture and sporting subjects.

“On the contemporary art scene, where virtually anything goes, Bryan Hanlon has unfashionably turned his back and rather turned his gaze intently and thoughtfully, upon the miscellaneous minutiae of nature.  The abstract beauty of a bird’s egg in form, colour and texture, a found feather, humble wild flowers, collectively feature in his paintings.  Of course, it is too easy to glance at these images and casually pigeon-hole them within the traditional genre of the still life.

However, the personal aesthetic that Bryan communicates is demonstrated by virtue of his subtle choice of objects and the way they are arranged on the canvas, and his undoubted virtuoso skill in handling paint.  These images remind me, in a nostalgic sense, of my childhood when I first discovered such treasures and, awestruck by their beauty, gloated over them as though they were gold.  I retain that spontaneous admiration to this day.  Bryan’s paintings remind us all of the deep pleasure gleaned if we pause to appreciate these everyday yet wondrous gifts from nature, modest, exquisite, simple, profound.  Bryan magically mirrors and gently evokes such human experience and emotion.”  Geoffrey Dashwood