Hannah Swearingen

US-24 - 24" x 36" -  Oil on panel - Not for Sale

DTE Energy - 24" x 24" Oil on panel - Not for Sale

High Tension - 16" x 36" - Oil on panel - Not for Sale

English Ivy - 28" x 24" -  Oil on panel - Not for Sale

Artist's Statement

Nature is often thought of as a world separate from our own, visited on vacation and in national parks. Instead of visiting the patch of woods behind our house or the overgrown field down the road, we reserve our experience of nature for curated and idealistic spaces. This has helped us forget that the road outside our house was once a swamp or a forest; and we forget that road still exists within an ecosystem. It is only by constant maintenance that the civilized world of concrete, steel, and asphalt stays intact. In reality, there is never a moment or space we inhabit that exists outside of nature.  We trudge through the outdoors as we go to work and school, but rarely do we think of what we pass. These spaces are forgotten, left to exist in an in-between state of human-made order and natural chaos.

My work attempt to depict moments where there is a fracturing of the man made world around us, exposing that we are always a part of nature. They attempt to encapsulate the contemporary human relationship with the world around us and confront the viewer with a realistic view of the state of nature, rather than the idealized one found in nature reserves. These liminal spaces between destinations offer up moments where our worlds collide and for a second bridges develop between the predictability of civilization and the unexplainable of the natural world.  These paintings aim to guide the viewer across these bridges and encourage them to reconsider their immediate surroundings as exciting and complex spaces worth engaging.

Artist's Personal Website

If you wish to purchase any of these pieces, please contact the gallery director, Jacqueline Nathan (jnathan@bgsu.edu.)