Hannah Richardson Reid is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist whose practice unfolds as an intuitive dialogue between opposing forces — colour that resists and bleeds, held against grids that seek to impose control. Within this practice lies an interrogation of the indescribable shifts of colour and light that surround us.

After many years as a design leader at major museums and galleries, Hannah craved the space to explore her innate love of colour and texture in a more personal way. She began this shift with deep research into colour theory, drawing on the traditions of abstract minimalism and Japanese textile work.

Through extensive trial and error she developed her unique method of 'weaving with dye' using pure linen and layers of textile dye both immersed and hand painted. Emerging through a meditative and intuitive process, the linen holds the memory of each layer until the pieces reverberate with a sense of weightless colour. Horizontal and vertical lines refer to textile weaving whilst providing a formal grid structure that places the work both within and apart from the stain painting tradition begun by Helen Frankenthaler. The works are at once free and conversely controlled — demonstrating the dialogue that creates them.