Welcome to my website! My name is Hannah Engelhardt, I am an artist from Germany and I paint oil paintings that are meant to portray the magic and the beauty in things.

My love for art, especially painting, has been with me ever since I could hold a paintbrush. I grew up in an artistic household and my parents encouraged and supported me from a young age. They always made me feel that expressing myself artistically is very valuable and beautiful.

From the age of six, I was allowed to attend a private art school throughout my entire school years. When I was allowed to paint with oil paint for the first time - I must have been about 11 years old - I immediately fell in love with this technique.

After graduating from high school, I wanted to pursue a creative direction and began studying communication design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in 2018. Even though I enjoy the creative work of communication design, my joy and the feeling of doing something with true dedication were replaced by fears and self-doubt. I was struggling with anxiety, panic attacks, I didn't see any real meaning in the things I did.

I sometimes forget that I actually successfully completed my studies in this unstable state and still have a bachelor’s degree, because the far greater achievement for me happened right after.

I really stepped back from everything and asked myself, "Hannah, what do you really want?“.

Step by step, I fought to regain a joy in things, a lightness, a meaning, a kind of primal trust. In April 2023, I painted for the first time in years. Painting helped me incredibly to get back in touch with myself. I think when I paint, I am most myself.

Sometimes it's not the degrees on some certificates, but a change within that makes us truly proud. I'm way more proud that I listened to my inner voice and that I had the courage to reorient myself and start something I truly love.

So, you now might think that I wanted to process the deep abysses of my mental state in my paintings. But I actually had a very strong need to consciously express beauty. And I somehow felt that by doing so, I could define what I wanted to make space for in my life.

I'm inspired by people, nature and things that I find beautiful, by colors, by light, by moments or encounters that touch me emotionally, by things that I have experienced or things that I dream about. I like to collect or photograph what I find aesthetically pleasing and translate this into rich, bright and clear colors in my oil paintings.

I am highly sensitive and have a very strong visual perception, which on the one hand quickly leads to sensory overload, but on the other hand allows me to perceive my surroundings very intensely. I call it the art of actually noticing. There is so much beauty in this world.

My work process is very intuitive, and I like to vary between detailed sections and more abstract areas of color. I like it when the individual, differently colored brushstrokes are visible, and only when viewed from a distance do they become representational or figurative. I primarily paint with oil paint on canvas because I love the pasty consistency, the ease of application, and the luminosity of the colors so much.

I learned - the heart desires to express itself. In the lightness of a liberated heart, expression can flow freely.

Let us continue to honor expressing ourselves.

Let us continue to honor art and handmade things.