Artist Statement.
My practice moves between portraiture and drawings of the natural world. It occupies its own niche between illustration and contemporary art, blurring those boundaries through images that take time and feeling to make. I have an insatiable curiosity that moves fluidly across the arts, sciences and humanities, and my practice draws especially on a longstanding interest in history, the natural world and the human condition.
I work mainly with inks but also watercolour, gouache, pen and coloured pencil. Portraits often begin when I feel moved by someone and want to depict the heart of who they truly are. I am especially drawn to people who have been misunderstood by society, who have experienced ill health or adversity or who have made a positive contribution to the world.
What I understand of a person, whether through reading about them or meeting them, is filtered through my own intuition and experiences and translated into a visual language that depicts something of their inner world not just their outward appearance or what the world perceives on the surface.
Nature is an essential foundation of connection and joy, and at times has been my only reliable source of comfort. It has an ongoing presence in my work. I approach my depictions of trees as I would a portrait of a person. My colour palette is chosen and curated to reflect nature especially in multiple shades of green, these and other colours drawn from nature often also appear in my portraits.
Whether I am drawing a person, a tree, or the natural world in general, I am interested in what makes each subject distinctly itself.
Artist Bio.
Claire Violet Hanley is carving a niche of her own on the boundaries between illustration and contemporary art, working across portraiture and drawings of the natural world. She brings an intuitive approach to questions of identity, individuality, and the human condition, alongside an insatiable curiosity which spans the arts, sciences, and humanities. Working primarily in inks, her practice is informed by a background in Social Anthropology and Modern Languages studied at the University of Cambridge, followed by a postgraduate degree in Global Politics from Southampton University.
Her work has been presented at the Science Museum, London, and on screen in Times Square, New York, with 2026 exhibitions including Winsor & Newton’s 'Art Mail' at the Saatchi Gallery in London and NYC Drawing Room. She has undertaken the Hastings School of Art’s Development Year and mentoring with the Arts and Health Hub. In 2026, she received an an Outside In Artists’ Materials Grant and an Artists Now (a-n) Professional Development Bursary.
a colour that is crucial to me and sometimes also appears in my portraits