Hannah Jesus Koh has been travelling across some of the USA’s and Iceland’s most notable sites, and painting what she sees in her trusty Moleskine watercolour notebook. But what is particularly interesting about Hannah’s paintings, and what makes them especially appropriate mementoes for the destinations, is that she uses water she finds at the site to mix and dilute her watercolours. Therefor residue from the landscape becomes inexplicably bonded to the paper as the watercolour dries.
For example Hannah Jesus Koh’s watercolour of San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge was painted using Pacific salt water collected from the beach below, while her paintings in colder climates were mixed using melted snow, glacier and iceberg. To top it off her portrayal of Brooklyn Bridge was even painted using cheap coffee. This technique started when Hannah was painting Gullfoss waterfall in Iceland, and found that the mist and water vapour that emanated from the plunging falls was enough to paint with.
It’s nice to know an elemental part of the scene will always be a literal part of my painting. The salty Arctic sea spray is infused into my painting of Dyrhólaey. Drops from the largest ocean on Earth permeate my small painting of the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pacific Northwest rain rains into my painting of Multnomah Falls. And cheap black coffee from a hole-in-the-wall joint in Brooklyn colors in the bricks of the Brooklyn Bridge.Hannah Jesus Koh
You can see more of Hannah Koh’s watercolour paintings on her Instagram, as well as plenty of other great photographs from her travels. Hannah has also created a postcard booklet from 20 of her works which she sells through her website here.
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Further Info
| Artist | Hannah Jesus Koh on Instagram |
|---|---|
| Shop | Hannah Jesus Co. |
Comments
The paint dries as the water evapourates leaving the pigment behind.
The paintings become almost totally free of any trace of the water as the paint dries
This is a very basic understanding of how paint works. However this would only be the case with distilled water. Are you suggesting that the salt of the seawater and the silt sediment present in river water evaporates too?