Hannah Knox's paintings of collars, zips and buttoned up cardigans tell stories about the human condition

""I focused on a few of my striped shirts, adjusting the garment for each new painting and I realised that if I folded the shirt (as you might find it in a shop or online) then it could fit exactly the format of the canvas," says Hannah. Creating a trompe l'oeil effect and becoming a type of stand-in body, Hannah's paintings reimagine the vessel of our personalities, status, sex appeal and identity by using images we so often see whilst shopping."

""I grew up around fashion, clothing and fabric, my mum was a fashion designer, and after she died, I found myself with the challenge of what to do with all the clothes and garments that she had collected, made, and worn," says Hannah. "These empty shells seemed to contain such significance, they are just clothes, but they seem to totally embody and represent the person who had worn them.""

"Inspired by Claus Oldenberg's Soft Sculptures and Magritte's The Treachery Of Images, Hannah's ideas about what painting could be drastically changed as the project progressed. As she began to depict fabric onto fabric, she began to see painting as a surrealist act in of itself, turning oily substances into what appears as physical, woven materials - and the meditative process of knitting mirrored the slowness of hyper-detailed painting."

Striped shirts are folded and painted to fit canvas formats, producing trompe l'oeil images that function as stand-in bodies. The painted garments embody personality, status, sex appeal and identity through familiar shopping imagery and worn clothing. Fabric is depicted onto fabric, transforming oil paint into convincing woven textures and treating painting as a surrealist act. Inspiration draws on Claus Oldenberg's Soft Sculptures and Magritte's The Treachery Of Images, and the meditative slowness of knitting parallels the labor of hyper-detailed painting. Small gestures, such as adding a collar, convert abstract patterns into garments and open layered interpretations of proximity and meaning.

Read at Itsnicethat