Hannah Garrison
San Antonio, TX
“I think about how art is nourishing my brain.”
Hannah Garrison (she/her) has been making art since she was a toddler, teaching herself to draw at the age of ten, attending a magnet school for the arts during high school, and later receiving her BFA in painting. After her diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis, Hannah’s artistic style drastically changed. Prior to her diagnosis, she was a self-described representational artist who “wanted perfection and realism. My work lacked personality and direction.” Starting to experiment with abstraction during her diagnosis, Hannah found her exploration to be a simple way to get her mind and body moving again. “Scribbling made sense. Now my pieces have color, are intuitive, and now have more soul. I'm less anxious about making mistakes. More squishy brushstrokes, intuition, & adaptation, less hard lines and rigidity.”
Hannah soon became accepting of scribbles and of loving herself in a way she had never felt before. “I learned to embrace my inner child, who I'd been ignoring for too long. My best work happens when I listen to my intuition and not get hard on myself for failing. There is no failing; just try again. I've learned that if I can't get my artistic vision out of my head, I'll start getting more depressed. I need to do it, no matter if I've never used a certain medium, because part of that need to make art is that need to explore.”
Often with multiple ideas “floating around” in her head, Hannah chooses to bring the first one that floats above the rest to life, without overthinking the process too much. Occasionally sketching first, Hannah attends to a clean surface to paint; black lines on the front, systematically layering colours based on the opacity of the hue. Her marks are rhythmic and harken to her inspirations of the varied textures and patterns found in nature: tree bark, moss, cliffs, pufferfish.
When not creating her own work, Hannah devotes her time to teaching art to patients in hospitals and other spaces for those with health challenges. Teaching art allows Hannah to “decompress” as well as to talk about life. “It's made me into a better person. I'm more empathetic, I'm an active listener, much more patient with people and am willing to do what it takes to make art more accessible, fun, and less intimidating.”
“I define creativity as thinking logically through the creation of something. Creating keeps my mind active, especially when I'm in a state where I can't focus, and when I have bad MS symptoms and mental health days. I can use art as a channel to reroute those negative emotions via repetition and problem-solving. I may not be able to fix all my problems in the real world, but it's rewarding and comforting when I can work through and fix issues in my art world.”
The drive to make art resonates within Hannah, “stemming from a need to make something that can allow me to escape the world for a bit by focusing on something. I have an opportunity to say something without saying words; I can be visually poetic. I can stand up for the things I care about, in an impactful way. Art is my meditation; I can let my thoughts weave in and out, allowing them to just be, and not judging myself for having them.”
