Hannah Rose Thomas - Fine Artist, painter
Studio 5

Hannah is a British artist who has just completed her PhD at the University of Glasgow, a scholarship with UNESCO. She has a BA in Arabic and History from Durham and an MA from the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Art in London, where she specialised in early Renaissance and iconography painting techniques.

Hannah was nominated for Forbes 30 Under 30 Art & Culture in recognition of her work as an artist highlighting the plight of displaced and marginalised communities. This has been her focus since 2014 when she was invited to organise art projects with Syrian refugees for UNHCR in Jordan. At this time she also began painting portraits of refugees whom she had met, to show the people behind the global crisis, whose personal stories are often hidden by statistics.

Hannah subsequently organised art projects for Yazidi women who had escaped ISIS captivity in Iraqi Kurdistan; Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi refugee camps; and survivors of Boko Haram and Fulani sexual violence in Northern Nigeria. The purpose of these art projects was two-fold – both therapeutic and for advocacy, to empower the women’s voices to be heard. During the art workshop the Yazidi women asked whether Hannah would also paint their portraits. These paintings formed an exhibition and book ‘Tears of Gold: Portraits of Yazidi, Rohingya and Nigerian Women,’ with a foreword from HM King Charles III.

To see more of Hannah’s work please visit her instagram page here or visit her website, www.hannahrosethomas.com