Gerard Hanson

Gerard Hanson is an artist specialising in a printmaking and creating public art. His work has been shown in galleries in London, Kingston Jamaica and Oxford, and he has worked on street projects in East Oxford. 'Jamaica was my Father's Home' was his first solo show of paintings. The pictures are all of Jamaica: street scenes by night, shops, huts, landscapes. Hanson made his first visit to his father's home in Jamaica when he was in his twenties giving inspiration to his work.

Gerard Hanson grew up with his mother and father in Bradford, England. "My Dad was part of the "Windrush" generation of economic migrants, he arrived in UK in 1956 and married my mother, herself an Irish immigrant, in 1964. They were therefore a mixed race couple in a time when that was an unusual thing."

"Bradford was, and still is, an economically depressed part of England. My father never spoke much about Jamaica as we were growing up, maybe because he feared we would never be able to afford to visit, which was indeed true until my early twenties."

"I cannot emphasise enough the effect my first exposure to Jamaica had on me. Having grown up, and hardly ever left, the grey, austere and industrial surrounding of home, to suddenly arrive in Jamaica was amazing. The colours, the light, the sheer exuberance of the place hit me like a ton of bricks! I think the utter contrast of these two worlds colliding has had a huge effect on my work. The feeling of otherness I have there, of not quite belonging, but at the same time being welcomed with open arms, the tug in two directions, all provide an excellent contrast."

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