Hannah Kaplan
Hi, I’m Hannah and I’m a Toronto based abstract artist and general dabbler in the creative arts. Growing up with depression, I had a passion for creating but I never had the confidence or sense of self worth to believe that I could be an artist. I thought that you had to master realism before you could start to experiment, and frankly, that was never going to happen for me. I didn’t have the patience or a strong enough desire to work at it.
When I was accepted into OCAD University in 2013, I was convinced they had let me in by mistake, but I figured I would make the most of things and try a bunch of different mediums in the hope that I would find something that spoke to me. I became frustrated with the way art school projects were set up, with an emphasis on creating a concept and executing it, which felt very unnatural and backwards to me. The reason I found myself drawn to art in the first place was a deep, intrinsic desire to express myself, and that need wasn’t being met in school.
Luckily, around this time I began seeing abstract artists on social media who were creating beautiful expressive work intuitively, from the soul rather than from the brain, and it resonated with me on a deep level. Ever since then, abstract painting has been a place where I can not only express myself intuitively, I can also relieve some of my anxiety and improve my mental health and fortitude.
Hi, I’m Hannah and I’m a Toronto based abstract artist and general dabbler in the creative arts. Growing up with depression, I had a passion for creating but I never had the confidence or sense of self worth to believe that I could be an artist. I thought that you had to master realism before you could start to experiment, and frankly, that was never going to happen for me. I didn’t have the patience or a strong enough desire to work at it.
When I was accepted into OCAD University in 2013, I was convinced they had let me in by mistake, but I figured I would make the most of things and try a bunch of different mediums in the hope that I would find something that spoke to me. I became frustrated with the way art school projects were set up, with an emphasis on creating a concept and executing it, which felt very unnatural and backwards to me. The reason I found myself drawn to art in the first place was a deep, intrinsic desire to express myself, and that need wasn’t being met in school.
Luckily, around this time I began seeing abstract artists on social media who were creating beautiful expressive work intuitively, from the soul rather than from the brain, and it resonated with me on a deep level. Ever since then, abstract painting has been a place where I can not only express myself intuitively, I can also relieve some of my anxiety and improve my mental health and fortitude.
