Hanna was born in Irvington, New Jersey in 1958. However, her current address is Somerville, Massachusettes. She has joined us in New London after spending the summer in the Ukraine traveling and visiting family.

When asked to desribe her work, Hanna responded with the following thoughts: "The process of painting is mysterious. It can bind you to the earth, or it can lift you to the heavens. It is as Rilke writes in his poem "Evening;" '...alternately stone in you and star.'

"I love the search and dialogue between myself and the canvas. There may be lapses in conversations for days. However, if I am lucky, the conversation can go on for hours, or sometimes it may last for only a minute- (I mean the real part of the conversation- the part that is honest.)"I love seeing what will emerge and how this `thing` will evolve. Often I wonder what internal forces dictate this process...

"In the past few years the images which have found their way into my work are figures from art history, usually images of women whose mystery intrigues me. They appear to be searching, contemplating, waiting... these images, combined with another world - made up of my own childhood, family memories, present life, imagination, Christian symbols (egg, butterfly) - and the paradoxes in the world surrounding us lead to the vision that is here at the Griffis Art Center."

A poem that has inspired Hanna: "Evening," from The Book of Pictures by Rilke.

The Sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;
and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;
and leave you (inexpressively to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.