All the works have been made during an extended residency at Bridgepoint studio in Rye, England, located near to Luke’s home. The scale of this work space offered an irresistible invitation to begin working on enormous canvases, by far and away the largest of his career thus far - this technical development encouraged a practical unlocking of potential, as Luke explains “Working this large helped me to unravel a new way of painting”. The resultant colossal paintings could, in different hands, be seen as grandiose, with their romantic and even classical form and gesture, but the deliberate rawness of material, creased and imperfect, provides a constant and inescapable reminder of human fallibility. The works for all their presence, remain notably and remarkably humble.

Hannam describes his work as the result of an “ordered chaos” where poetic paintings are made “in the eye of the storm”. Creativity spins wildly, through bursts of impulse around a silent meditative deep well of meaning. Ideas emerge out of an energetic dedication to drawing and a relentless desire to explore images and motifs, many of which come to him in his dreams which are experienced and remembered with absolute lucidity. His work is instantly recognisable through a strong punch of colour and definite use of line which weaves its way sensuously across the surface, denoting both the delicacy and strength of the form and spirit of the subject. Hannam’s paintings expressively offer a singular view on how what he sees, how he thinks and pivotally how he feels about the human condition and what lies beyond our materiality. As such his work continues the Romantic tradition, embracing reality and mysticism with the wonder of experience to visionary effect - these are not paintings about far off realms of fantasy, they are rooted in the here and now, a reflection of the true nature of existence, solitary yet connected, violent and beautiful in blossoming flux, where potential renews through continual deep rooted contemplation, endeavour and struggle.

I can think of no more appropriate exhibition than Luke Hannam’s ‘The Compass & The Rosary’ for us to emerge from our own caves and welcome the coming of Spring.


Joseph Clarke, Director of Anima Mundi

Elijah has been a persistent voice in Luke Hannam’s imagination and work for the last few months, a recurring image demanding to be released through a torrent of paintings and drawings. Again and again, the emaciated, gaunt figure of Elijah stares out at us, a looming, naked form, pleading, exhausted, visionary, tended to by an angel, conjured from a nebulous cloud made up of brush strokes or lyrically searching pencil lines.

It was inevitable that Hannam would be drawn to the Old Testament story of Elijah, for it contains so many of the elements we associate with his work: a figure or figures alone in a vast, sublime landscape, a sense of epic journey, the presence of angels and supernatural or mythical beings, intense emotions, atmospheric turbulence and the possibility of an encounter with the Divine. From these fragmented shards and multiple layers, Hannam weaves arresting narratives. But Hannam is not a teller of tales, he is a teaser of tales. He gives us the ingredients and like a vaguely remembered dream asks us to connect the dots and fill in the blanks, to find that universal connection that will bind the whole together.

Elijah heard God in the still small voice, but Hannam’s encounter with otherness begins in the storm of creation, in the thunder and chaos of a creative process that is furious and frenetic. HIs vast canvases are finished at high speed, lines tumbling from his mind through his arm down to the brush or pencil almost too quickly to be registered. Subjects are pulled from the vivid reality of his dreams into a whirlwind of thought and imagination, where he is constantly looking for difference in a multiplicity of almost identical images, pursuing patterns that will help him put these fragments and layers together into a larger whole.

As if standing in the void before creation, surrounded by atoms waiting to coalesce, bombarded by unseen photons of light containing potential colour, Hannam’s paintings offer encounters with the formlessness of the sublime. These are spaces of promise where lines dart and jab like luminous messengers. Borders and bodies have not yet formed, allowing colours to cross potential boundaries, pursuing the vibration that comes from interaction, as one colour seeks to define itself in relation to another. Sometimes the space between these marks seems limitless, a yawning chasm of raw canvas, in which the illusion of familiar forms is replaced by stitch marks and seams that celebrate the mundane realities of painting and making. Sometimes the marks have coagulated into areas of dense colour where forms begin to solidify, and the tangible world takes shape.

If Hannam’s paintings offer us an encounter with the sublime, then his drawings provide moments of beauty. He may create them before the paintings, working out ideas, capturing his visions, exploring possibilities. But instead of being preparatory sketches, they are guiding visions offering him solid moments to aim for, a promise of form amid the formlessness of paint. In the thin, focused trail of a pencil he finds the still small voice, guiding him, like a sailor after a long voyage, back home to dry land.

There is a seemingly effortless facility to Hannam’s drawings. His lines are lyrical and expressive, creating a nebulous cloud in the centre of the sheet of paper where narratives are born. They invite us to dance in their sinuous embrace, pulling us in, encouraging us to follow meandering trails that suddenly dissolve into a mist of densely shaded mystery. They may show us the beauty of ideal form, but they also show us the possibility and promise of physical presence in an ocean of potential space.

Hannam’s drawings are the compass that brings order to the apparent chaos and turbulence of his practise, a process of constant repetition, which, like saying the Rosary, enables him to reach out in hope, as a voyager into unknown realms that offer the promise of vibrant presence.


Richard Davey, 2021


(Richard Davey is an internationally published author, curator and member of the International ‘Association of Art Critics’. He was a judge of the John Moores Painting Prize 2016 and wrote the major exhibition publication for Anselm Kiefer’s solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, in 2014 alongside the 2015, 2016 and 2017 ‘Royal Academy Summer Exhibition’ catalogues.)