Gillian Hancey

Gillian Hancey is a Scottish artist who specialises in using an earthy palette to create paintings that are usually based on an image but have an abstract feel, with the subject matter often inspired by her travels around Latin America. Gillian has always really enjoyed drawing and painting as a hobby, and creating life-like portraits of people was her main interest for a long time. This really came to life when she spent a couple of years living in South America –she took thousands of photos of the many people and children she met and worked with, and continues to use these as inspiration and subject matter today. The vibrant Latin American culture also influenced the style of her work as she likes to make good use of colour to bring images to life, and this has gradually evolved into a distinctive earthy palette. She developed her portrait work with various commissions, but then started to experiment with different abstract techniques and now most of her work is based on an image but with an abstract feel. She mainly works in acrylic but most of her pieces end up being mixed media as she adds different elements to achieve the right look and texture. Gillian grew up in Scotland but has been based in the South East of England since 2009.