A questioning of integrity: Hannah Buckman digs into the psychological root of her illustrative ideas

We’ve long been fans of Hannah Buckman and at July’s Nicer Tuesdays Online, we were lucky enough to hear from the artist and illustrator herself. During her perceptive talk, Hannah took us through her career to date and the major themes and thought processes that have punctuated her practice thus far. Her story began as a recent graduate of Camberwell College of Arts, working with the acclaimed platform gal-dem. There, Hannah cut her teeth as an editorial illustrator, fine tuning her thoughtful practice and perfecting her already highly unique aesthetic vision.

Taking us through a couple of particular commissioned highlights along the way, Hannah then told us about how her practice has changed of late, an artistic transformation that came with questioning “why am I drawn to creating more of this stuff?” In turn, she pushed her practice further both technically and conceptually; switching up her recognisable digital style with a more surreal one, featuring analogue techniques and underpinned by psychoanalytic ideas. This recent prong of her practice has taken her back to the basics of drawing by hand. In this reflective talk pondering the reason she makes art in the first place, Hannah explained the thought process behind these recent changes which includes a questioning of integrity and a yearning “to learn how to use physical materials again”.