Hanna Will was born in Warsaw, Poland. Her youth was spent in an atmosphere where artistic creativity was challenged by a restrictive political system, and the various cultural circles to which she was exposed were highly charged. She pursued a classical education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and received a Masters Degree in Painting and Art History. Constantly traveling between Poland and France, where she eventually settled down with her family, she extended her cultural circles to Parisian groups of writers, poets, filmmakers, actors, dancers, artists, philosophers and academicians.
Hanna Will is a natural colorist, and considers the biggest impact on her artistic vision to be Marc Rothko, whose paintings she saw in London as a teenager. Other artists she considers influential include Arshille Gorky, Willem deKooning, Lee Krasner, Anselm Kiefer and Per Kirkebv. Her paintings hang in residences in every continent and have been included in solo shows and group shows in Europe and the United States.
She has lived in New York City since 1987.
Hanna Will was awarded a grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation in 2012.
HANNA WILL STATEMENT
On the SUNS AND HEARTS Exhibition
The Heart paintings express a love affair of many dimensions.
The Sun paintings express unlimited creation.
“When heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
Milan Kundera
"Something must be achieved inwardly"
Rudolf Steiner
This body of work, from 2023, came as an organic extension of my writings on love and heart, inspired by my exchange with another. When exploring the subject of an open heart we unequivocally enter the territory of unabashed freedom of intimacy combined with extreme vulnerability. The heart has to break the barrier of fear: it requires a passionate love affair with life itself to express divine influxes ( to use William Blake's phrase) fully. It requires purified flow, authenticity, innocence, and trust.
Love and trust are the most refined and primordial emotions of creation. There is no love without trust and vice versa. And if we do not express them simultaneously the fear reins, and the heart cannot open. The next step is a high heart , an ecstatic dance with another being, another earth, another cosmos.
The titles of the paintings match the insights of the quest. RUBY IN MY HEART represents the mystical quality of the gem and its inextinguishable flame within. INCANDESCENT HEART COMMUNICATION expresses the elevated energy of a moment of joy . Oneness in reciprocity of bliss and the spontaneous spirit of adventure sustain boundless magic. It becomes a cosmic dance of limitlessness or omniscience when the high heart is opened, and the switch between inner and outer realms begins to function.
The ancients say the cosmos opens on every third breath, and lets the ray of light escape to recreate cosmic patterns. The dominant play of the Mind over Heart unfolds its game, representing the tyranny of order. But entropy prevails: everything in the universe eventually moves from order to disorder. Lack of order or predictability gradually degrades as Matter and Energy in the Universe return to the state of inert uniformity.
Gravitational fields open with gratitude, a state of awareness that creates alignment with the receptive and feminine nature of the Earth. Levity, the boundless energy of spirit lifting upwards, emerges from the attitude of praise. These are secrets both scientists and mystics try to grasp and transcend.
Inspired by subtle promptings I conceive and deliver in my artwork, remembering that inspired means simply the in-breathe of the Spirit. The result can be exaltation of the Spirited.
HANNA WILL STATEMENT
from 2000 Catalog
"To whose eyes?" Sappho
"Going in fear of abstractions...." Ezra Pound
"Pure water poured into pure water remains the same. This is the Self of a thinker who knows." Katha-Upanishad
Two parallel tendencies have always been present in my life: spirituality and creativity. Like an alignment of dazzling forces in mutual reciprocity, they pass through me - the Observer - and go in opposite directions, one inward, the other outward. Their source is one and their intrinsic nature is to be present at the moment.
The creative process itself is an ability to capture the elusiveness of now and to freeze it in the right time. In his pursuit to name manifestations of mystical and aesthetic experience, Aldous Huxley found the word Suchness. The etymology of words unfolds in front of us secret layers of primal ideas containing eternal wisdom and truth. The Sanscrit word dhyana means as well attention and meditation. Once studying ancient Greek I came across the word eudaimonia, meaning a yearning of the soul for perfect happiness. Inevitably, there is no eudaimonia in the platonic sense without the virtue arete - good and absolute goodness. Ancient words evoke the essence of human mystery, our aspirations to ascend and our innermost longings to transcend ourselves. In the best sense an artist would be a facilitator of profound catharsis, a change of consciousness for others if not only for himself!
While meditating we become transmitters of two subtle currents which govern universes: the Energy of Mother and the Energy of Father.
These qualities the concrete mind cannot represent. I have tried to loosely associate my paintings with an awareness of such presence and vibration. When asked if some of my works represent the bottom of the ocean, Kirilian photography, or images from the Hubble telescope, I say all of the above. Interestingly enough, morphic representation in the organic world repeats itself constantly in nature and can be best described by the Fibonacci spiral, except for the perfect circle, a conceptual ideal created by our intellect.
Initially I hesitated to give names to my work since, to paraphrase the Tibetan mystic Milarepa, when named it becomes a thing apart. So my paintings become altars to Mother and Father. However, one should not get caught in verbal games of names and attributes here too seriously. Ultimate consciousness, saccidananda, cannot be described by mind stuff. Beyond this ring-pass-not, one surrenders worldly identifications, ego, personality, and glamour. And He is She and She is He.
Anami, nameless.
So humbly one again remembers ancient Sanskrit scriptures which reveal It simply by negation,
Neti Neti, neither this nor that.
Namaste.