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A wise man by the name of Joseph Campbell once said, “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.” The same phrase could be applied to the career and life of Boston artist Hannah Cole.

As a child, Hannah was always flexing her creative muscles. She states, “I always loved to draw and I doodled a lot as a little kid. When the other kids would want me to come out and play, I’d always be drawing.” At the ripe old age of five, Hannah decided she wanted to attend Yale University. She eventually did; but, feeling the pressures of the adult world, she hesitated in choosing painting as a major, worried that the career of an artist was too risky and that she needed a “day” job. As a result, Hannah explains, “I started out in political science and I slowly, slowly started changing my major until it was looking more and more like an art major, so I ended up majoring in art history.” All the while Hannah felt torn between what the world was telling her to do and what she innately felt was meant for her life. “I took painting classes,” Hannah recollects, “in my last

Visit Hannah Cole’s website at www.hannahcole.net to see more of this great artist’s unique pieces.

few years there because it was just beginning to dawn on me that with my love for it, it just didn’t feel right to not be painting…in the back of my head I knew if I worked really hard I could make things happen.” And Hannah did make things happen. She graduated from Yale and went on to do graduate studies at Boston University, receiving numerous awards and honors along the way.

Hannah draws inspiration from every facet of life, resulting in paintings that have an unusual and unexpected point of view. “It comes from everywhere,” Hannah testifies; “it comes from the other arts for sure. I love literature, I read a lot, and it also comes from looking at other work, going to museums, having profound experiences, walking in the woods, or just dumb little things that happen during everyday life.” As a result, gorgeously detailed and realistic oil paintings of things others might overlook—such as the view from the inside of a car—are a signature of hers. When looking at the true-to-life details in her paintings, one might think there must be some magic trick, some other force guiding her hand. Hannah refutes this notion, stating, “It’s mostly practice. I put a lot of hours in every night. That’s basically the answer; there’s definitely no miracle about it. It’s just a lot of work.” This amount of hard work, paired with her obvious level of talent, enables Hannah to produce beautiful masterpieces. However, these paintings don’t just leap onto the canvas. There is one more element to add to the formula that Hannah uses to develop her paintings, and that is time. On average, one painting takes about a month or two, but usually the development is not one painting after the next. Hannah describes her process, saying, “I might have anywhere from three to ten paintings going at the same time. After a point I get really excited about one, and I work really hard on this one above all the other ones and then I pick up one I haven’t touched. It’s not cut and dry, where I finish one and then start the next. Having them all together in the studio at different stages of development, they all kind of talk to each other in the studio that way. So I learn things from one and do it in another.” All of these things combined produce works of art that are so realistic that one must often take a second look, because at first glance they look like photographs rather than paintings.

It takes more than just raw talent to become a proficient artist. It takes passion as well as drive. Hannah describes what you need in order to make an impact: “If you feel in your gut like it’s something you really want to do, I think it’s important to ask the question of yourself: Is this something you really want? Because I’ve seen some people, for one reason or another, get kind of pushed, and decide they want to do it without as much conviction as they need. But if you really know you want to do it, then you have to just listen to yourself and go for it. Another thing is to always work; it’s important to take breaks for sure, but always work as hard as you can, always thinking: Is this the best work I can make? That’s the important question.”

Obviously, Hannah knows the answer to that question. She is living the life meant for her and creating art because she has a passion she cannot avoid or, in the words of Joseph Campbell, because she is following her bliss. Hannah is currently working on more paintings in her studio in West Medford, Massachusetts. “I’m still really interested in painting the world out of a car,” Hannah says, “because there’s just something that feels right about it to me that I can’t quite explain. I’m working on that and I’m just working on making the paintings better.”

Visit Hannah Cole’s website at www.hannahcole.net to see more of this great artist’s unique pieces.