Hannah Pugh is a Birmingham‑based contemporary artist working with ink, bleach, acrylic, watercolour, and gilded details to create atmospheric, otherworldly abstract landscapes. Her intuitive mixed‑media process blends memory, imagination, and magical realism, resulting in dreamlike works that drift between reality and daydream.
This pieces are from Hannah Pugh’s debut exhibition at Seventh Circle, ‘All Is Not Lost - Crossing Into Elsewhere, a collection exploring transformation and the spaces we move through.
The Ephemera series takes its name from objects that exist only briefly, tickets, notes, scraps of paper, fragments of the everyday that are easily lost or overlooked. Each painting in the series incorporates found paper from Hannah’s studio: etching fragments, drawings, painted scraps, pieces that once served a purpose and then drifted into the margins. By embedding them into new compositions, she gives these fleeting materials a renewed presence.
Hannah became fascinated by maritime gothic imagery while developing the series. “I like the idea that with a gust of wind, a glimpsed doorway might be revealed to another place that almost fits with our own but not quite,” she explains. This sense of sudden revelation — a portal appearing in the corner of the eye, threads through the work.
The antique etchings she uses are all from the Southwest of England, a region deeply woven into her life: childhood holidays, years spent at Falmouth College of Art, and her partner’s roots in Plymouth. These landscapes carry personal resonance, but they also act as mythic anchors. One ink‑and‑bleach paper fragment sparked a memory of the “fairy dingles” she visited as a child in Edinburgh, a recollection so hazy it feels dreamlike, yet unwavering in its emotional truth.
Literary influences also shape the series. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust trilogies are among Hannah’s favourite stories, and she kept returning to the idea of the Subtle Knife, a blade that can “very precisely split the weft and weave of universal fabric,” allowing the wielder to slip into another layer of reality. Doorways, thresholds and the thinness of the veil became central motifs.
“I think it would be easier to do this, to cut through into Elsewhere, around the ancient standing stones of our landscape,” she says. “I think they hold the veil taut.”
The Ephemera series sits at the intersection of memory, myth and materiality: a constellation of paper fragments, half‑remembered places, and imagined doorways into worlds that almost align with our own.
Acrylic, cartridge paper, tattoo ink and silver marbled leaf on cradled wooden panel
Size W 27.9 × L 35.5 cm
Acrylic, cartridge paper, writing ink, bleach and 24ct gold leaf on cradled wooden panel
Size W 35.5 × L 27.9 cm
Acrylic, cartridge paper, writing ink, bleach and 24ct gold leaf on cradled wooden panel
Size W 35.5 × L 27.9 cm
All Original Artwork
.
Shipping
Seventh Circle provides free shipping across the UK and Northern Ireland.
For international orders, please contact us (hello@svnthcrcl.com) for a custom shipping quote outside of the UK and Northern Ireland.
For more information, please see our terms and conditions.
Hannah Pugh is a Birmingham‑based contemporary artist working with ink, bleach, acrylic, watercolour, and gilded details to create atmospheric, otherworldly abstract landscapes. Her intuitive mixed‑media process blends memory, imagination, and magical realism, resulting in dreamlike works that drift between reality and daydream.
This pieces are from Hannah Pugh’s debut exhibition at Seventh Circle, ‘All Is Not Lost - Crossing Into Elsewhere, a collection exploring transformation and the spaces we move through.
The Ephemera series takes its name from objects that exist only briefly, tickets, notes, scraps of paper, fragments of the everyday that are easily lost or overlooked. Each painting in the series incorporates found paper from Hannah’s studio: etching fragments, drawings, painted scraps, pieces that once served a purpose and then drifted into the margins. By embedding them into new compositions, she gives these fleeting materials a renewed presence.
Hannah became fascinated by maritime gothic imagery while developing the series. “I like the idea that with a gust of wind, a glimpsed doorway might be revealed to another place that almost fits with our own but not quite,” she explains. This sense of sudden revelation — a portal appearing in the corner of the eye, threads through the work.
The antique etchings she uses are all from the Southwest of England, a region deeply woven into her life: childhood holidays, years spent at Falmouth College of Art, and her partner’s roots in Plymouth. These landscapes carry personal resonance, but they also act as mythic anchors. One ink‑and‑bleach paper fragment sparked a memory of the “fairy dingles” she visited as a child in Edinburgh, a recollection so hazy it feels dreamlike, yet unwavering in its emotional truth.
Literary influences also shape the series. Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust trilogies are among Hannah’s favourite stories, and she kept returning to the idea of the Subtle Knife, a blade that can “very precisely split the weft and weave of universal fabric,” allowing the wielder to slip into another layer of reality. Doorways, thresholds and the thinness of the veil became central motifs.
“I think it would be easier to do this, to cut through into Elsewhere, around the ancient standing stones of our landscape,” she says. “I think they hold the veil taut.”
The Ephemera series sits at the intersection of memory, myth and materiality: a constellation of paper fragments, half‑remembered places, and imagined doorways into worlds that almost align with our own.
Acrylic, cartridge paper, tattoo ink and silver marbled leaf on cradled wooden panel
Size W 27.9 × L 35.5 cm
Acrylic, cartridge paper, writing ink, bleach and 24ct gold leaf on cradled wooden panel
Size W 35.5 × L 27.9 cm
Acrylic, cartridge paper, writing ink, bleach and 24ct gold leaf on cradled wooden panel
Size W 35.5 × L 27.9 cm
All Original Artwork
.
Shipping
Seventh Circle provides free shipping across the UK and Northern Ireland.
For international orders, please contact us (hello@svnthcrcl.com) for a custom shipping quote outside of the UK and Northern Ireland.
For more information, please see our terms and conditions.
