"Finlator's work transcends some of the common assumptions of post-modernism by reintegrating the social with the personal and by genuinely exploring cultural traditions, rather than dismissing them outright."
 -Colby Caldwell (Introduction: Finlator: Artists and Sources of Influence, 2008)
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

Société Imaginaire: Germany, Poland, Uruguay, US.

Artist in Residence, Museum Lichtenberg im Stadthaus, Berlin, Germany

Künstlerateliers Im Speicher II, Ist Offen '06 Collaboration with Claudia Sacher, Münster Germany.

Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Hatton Gallery. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Split Panel, Tremont Street Gallery, Boston, US.

Queen's Hall, Hexham UK.

Myles Meehan Gallery, Darlington UK.

Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington DC.

For exhibition history, see CONTACT.


BIOGRAPHY:

Born in North Carolina, Hannah Verena Finlator received a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington D.C. in 2000, and completed a master's in fine art at Newcastle upon Tyne University, England, in 2002.

Finlator combined studio practice with an intense art history focus, studying the European Renaissance collections of paintings at the Corcoran Gallery, National Gallery of Washington DC Gallery, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Finlator's work gave rise to her principal source of reference: early wood panel painting, and women painters of the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe. Finlator's research formed the basis of her masters thesis in studio practice, "Artist and Sources of Influence", awarded by Newcastle upon Tyne University, UK.

In 2008 Finlator led a seminar with a keynote presentation at the Department of Art and Art History at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, as part of the college's artist residency program. Her keynote hypothesized analytical connections between anonymous medieval/early Renaissance works and early women painters, highlighting artists Katerina de Hemessen, Sofonisba Anguissola, and Lavinia Fontana, to discuss ways no-name artists of the past, while often confounding art historians and museum-goers, can provide rich grounds for meaning and knowledge to artists now. The following year, Finlator exhibited a large scale diptych inspired by the family portrait composition of Anguissola's masterpiece, The Chess Game, at the Corcoran Museum of Art's final alumni exhibition.

Between 2002 and 2009, Finlator continued exhibiting in Britain, exploring ways to address art by women of XVI ce. through new studio work. In 2010 Finlator presented a solo exhibition in Boston, MA. entitled, "Split Panel" which explored how traditional diptych and triptych compositional supports elaborate narrative interpretation, such as time spaces, as well as viewer-artist communication. Following a year-long British Arts Council exchange residency in Berlin, which culminated in her outdoor painting exhibition of multi-panel works- as part of city-wide "Lange Nacht der Bilder-" she relocated to Berlin and then eventually to the Rhineland city of Cologne.

In Cologne, Finlator pursued study as an intern of restoration and conservation for painting and sculpture at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Cologne 2010-2011. Following a one year, Finlator was awarded a scholarship to continue at the Cologne Institute for Conservation Science where she audited courses in the bachelor degree program, before returning to her studio work with new material and inspiration.

Most recently, Finlator is undertaking a series of paintings to combine aspects of restoration practice with new and re-worked panel paintings themed, "pentimenti". Her studio is in Raleigh, NC., where she lives with husband Andreas, daughter Lavinia and son Johannes.



After Catherine de Hemessen's Portrait of a Woman
oil on gesso board
9" x 12"
Sketchbooks, 1996 - 2009
Ambrosius Holbein,
Master of the Female Half-Lengths
ink, paper

Seashell application
"The artist changes her mind."
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