Hannah Holmes is a St Catharines’ born amateur artist living in Thorold, Ontario. She recently returned to school part-time and is currently pursuing her fifth degree, a BA in Studio Art at Brock University. Hannah likes to paint portraits and architectural landscapes, especially old industrial sites and buildings under demolition.
Her preferred media are acrylics, oils, and pastels. New to the local art scene, she has just recently begun to show works in juried shows in the Niagara Region and won first place in the Brock Arts Collective 2019 student show. A full-time faculty member of the Economics Department at McMaster University, Hannah hopes to teach painting and drawing upon her retirement from academia.
Story Behind the Painting
The Old General’s Last Stand (24" x 30") was inspired by the photography of Amanda Lambert. For this competition, I took my own photographs and this work is the result, a continuation of my interest in old structures with interesting histories.
The St Catharines General Hospital had been a local fixture since its initial establishment in 1865, closing in 2013 and demolished in spring 2019. The razing of the site radically transformed the landscape, save for the preservation of what was once a door. The window we know from recent photographs had been transformed early on, and I have chosen to portray that original façade to highlight the building’s real age. The doorway stands as a triumphant monolith, towering imposingly above the rabble. The viewer can only watch from a distance, protected from any danger by the chain-link fence. The fence also suggests that the work on the site is not finished; there is more transformation to come. I chose to use wood support to represent the rigidity and strength of the doorway. I hope the viewer gets a sense of lost history and at the same time, hope for something new and alive to come
