Hannah Dale/Wrendale Designs
Artist Hannah Dale, otherwise known as Wrendale Designs, started off her career reading at Cambridge and then worked as a stockbroker. It was not until she relocated to a small village in the county of Lincolnshire that she decided to return to her artistic roots. She first out her practicality to use by furnishing the windows of friends and family with blinds and curtains, as well as creating personalised children’s nursery paintings. Hannah Dale is heavily inspired by the outdoor life and surroundings that come with living in the scenic Lincolnshire countryside and started off by painting hares because of their “expressive faces and wonderful personalities”. (Website 1) Through the success of these initial paintings, she then moved on to expanding her range of designs to include animals such as; pheasants, foxes, dogs, hens and geese. Leading on from these paintings it was suggested to Dale that she design some cards and then created the business with her husband and named it Wrendale Designs – “an amalgamation of Wrenwood House, where I grew up, and Pepperdale Farm, where Jack did.” (Website 2). Wrendale Designs have been supplying cards nation and worldwide, as well as producing ceramic wares, stationary, homeware, children’s books and other gift items. I came across Hannah Dale as an artist whilst looking into her prints as a gift for a family member, and found her work due to once living in the surrounding villages to her in Lincolnshire whilst growing up.
Hannah Dale’s work is of a similar style to my own art due to the fact that my own paintings and drawings are greatly inspired by nature, especially the colours I choose to use in my works and the subject matter of birds and other animals. When it comes to my own work and my chosen subject matter I am drawn to drawing birds because of the wide range of colour and texture that you can explore and emphasise when looking at detail that is shown on each feather as well as how each breed and species can look completely different from the last in shape and size. Birds also hold an emotional link to myself through living in the countryside myself I would often see how many different types of them I could spot in the gardens and car journeys with family. When it comes to my chosen colour palette I take more natural and earthy colours such as blues, greens and browns when painting wildlife, yet when painting backgrounds I work in a more Abstract Expressionist style; using splashes and drips of paint as well as blending and manipulating the material with palette knives, brushes and even my bare hands. I tend to use a wider range of colours for this side of my paintings, but I am mostly drawn to pastel shades because their visual qualities are bright, happy and look aesthetically pleasing to me without being too busy or overpowering, which has the possibility to overbalance the composition.
