About
A Life of Looking
Long before I understood what it meant to be a painter, I was gathering
I grew up at the Jersey Shore surrounded by water, changing skies, wind, and the movement of the ocean. Those early impressions stayed with me. Years later, living in the Florida Keys, I found myself responding again to water and light, not as something new, but as something strangely familiar.
I have come to understand that we never look at a place with completely fresh eyes. We bring our history with us. A particular light, a color, the movement of water or a figure passing through a scene can awaken something remembered.
Travel continued to change what I noticed not simply new places, but different qualities of light, color, atmosphere pace. The practice of yoga reinforced something similiar: attention matters, and being present changes what we are able to see.
Painting became the place where what I see and what I remember could meet.
Barbara Hann is a South Florida oil painter based in the Florida Keys. Her work explores water, tropical light, architecture and the human presence within coastal life. Working from plein-air observation, photography and memory, she balances recognizable form with expressive color, movement and brushwork.
Hann has presented solo exhibitions at the Key West Art Center and The Studios of Key West and has been selected for juried exhibitions at the Key West Museum of Art & History and Jag Gallery. Her commissioned work includes Audubon House, created in 2025 for a collaborative cultural marketing campaign and acquired by a private collection in 2026. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Key West Art Center and on the Umbrella Committee of the Florida Keys Council of the Arts.
Selected Career Highlights
· 2026 Poolside, Jag Gallery, Key West
· 2025 Saltwater Diaries, solo exhibition, The Studios of Key West
· 2025 Shadow & Light, Key West Museum of Art & History; Sea Breeze featured in the exhibition marketing campaign
· 2025 Audubon House, commissioned for a collaborative cultural marketing campaign
· 2022–2024 Three annual solo exhibitions, Key West Art Center
Education and Practice
Hann studied fine art at Moore College of Art and has continued her development through long-term study in plein-air painting, figure drawing, portraiture and color theory. Her painting practice has also taken her to Paris and the Loire Valley, extending her exploration of place, atmosphere and memory beyond South Florida.
Learning to See
My formal art education began at Moore College of Art in Philadelphia, but learning to see continued far beyond the classroom.
For many years, flowers became both my profession and another kind of education. Working with them taught me to recognize subtle shifts of color, structure and rhythm, to notice how one color changes because of the color beside it, and how light can completely alter what we think we see.
Those years trained my eye in ways I did not fully understand at the time. Looking closely became instinctive.
The lesson was never simply about flowers. It was about learning to see relationships.
The Practice
Painting became a way of testing everything I had learned
Working both in the studio and outdoors taught me that seeing is only the beginning. Light changes. Water moves. People disappear. A scene refuses to wait while I decide what to do.
Over time, I became less interested in describing everything and more interested in finding the structure beneath it, the large shapes, the value relationships, the movement and the few things that make a place feel like itself.
And repetition changed the work. The more I painted, the more willing I became to trust the first response.
Practice taught me that confidence doesn’t come from adding more. It comes from knowing what matters.
