Congratulations to Bunny Hennessey, BA Fine Art 2024 alumna and one of the winners of the Freelands Painting Prize 2024.
The Freelands Painting Prize “celebrates outstanding painting practice taking place at undergraduate level in art schools and universities across the UK”, and each year, invites higher education institutions to nominate one of their final year students. Bunny was one of twelve winners selected for the prize.
In an Artists Q&A with the Freelands Foundation, Bunny was asked the following questions:
How did studying art in the institution or school you went to, impact the way in which you approach your work? i.e. any teaching approaches, resources or curriculum.
I feel so lucky to have studied at City & Guilds of London Art School, from the studio spaces to the close group of friends I made there. But above all it was the tutors’ time and care that really pushed me. I feel that they unlocked something and helped me discover why and how I paint. It’s having that mix of encouragement and deep questioning that has helped me beyond anything I could achieve on my own.
What theme/s or subject/s are you investigating with your practice?
When I paint I’m thinking about painting the body as something we inhabit and experience, rather than it being a physical object we look at. I’m interested in embodied sensations and if emotions can be described with colour and liquidity. To me the body is a failed container of how we feel, and I want to challenge the canvas to store this in a more stable way.
How does your chosen medium best reflect the subjects and/or themes that you choose to focus on?
I paint in oils because I feel it has such a wide spectrum of fluidity that can mirror our psychological and emotional landscape – it can be a free flowing luminous wash or it can be thick, sticky and stagnant. I’m interested in how this liquidity becomes settled and fixed on a canvas, and can live beyond us, storing what we are unable to.
Have you applied any teaching approaches into how you develop ideas or create your work?
I remember a tutor very early on in our introductory life drawing that noticed how I was drawing and suggested that I didn’t have to just draw as I saw the body, that I could abstract the form. It was the first time I felt I had permission to approach my practice in this way, something that feels invaluable now.
The Freelands Painting Prize 2024 exhibition is open until November 9th, 113 Regent’s Park Road, NW1 8UR London.
Monday to Friday, 12 pm – 6 pm (by appointment only)
Saturday, 12 pm – 6 pm (open access)
Header image: Bunny Hennessey with her painting ‘Laundry Day’ at the opening of the Freelands Painting Prize 2024 exhibition.