Page 64 - 01-Jan-Feb-2025

STAGE
Painter
Hannah
Jeanne
Semenko
ARTS
TRANSFORMING
OBJECTS
INTO ART
Hannah Jeanne Semenko’s paintings need to
be seen in all their three-dimensional glory
by LAUREN KALINOWSKI
Hands reach through the sky. Swirls of bright
blues and oranges dance across landscapes. Texture
emerges from fragments of encyclopedia pages, where
academic facts dissolve into abstract beauty. These
motifs ripple throughout Hannah Jeanne Semenko’s
paintings.
The text embedded in her work tells its own story
of metamorphosis — once part of a leather-bound
encyclopedia set initially gifted by her parents to
prepare her for university life. As she entered her 30s,
these repositories of traditional learning underwent
their own evolution.
“I’d line up the beautiful brown leather-bound books
— they had gold leaf edges, they were gorgeous and
I’d use them to make my house cozy,” she says. “But
then, eventually, I found myself tearing them apart to
repurpose them.”
Just as she liberates words from their structured pages
to find new meaning in art, Semenko has freed herself
from conventional expectations. A year ago, she left her
corporate recruiting career to commit herself to painting
— a parallel act of creative destruction and rebirth.
64 EDify. JANUARY • FEBRUARY.25
“Being an introvert, and an artist, that
corporate world wasn’t really my passion,” she
explains. “So I figured if I were to make myself
uncomfortable going to work in a job every
day that wasn’t authentic to me, I could also
make myself uncomfortable in a different way
to put myself out there as an artist.”
Semenko’s recently been recognized in the
internationally juried Teravarna Art Competition.
Seven works received awards.
Art has always been a part of her life.
“I remember when my dad was on the road,
I’d fax pictures I’d drawn to him,” she recalls
of her relationship with her father, the late,
great Oiler Dave Semenko.
“And my mom filled our house with Renoir,
Van Gogh, Monet — she was a sketch artist
herself.”
After a brief cartoon-drawing phase, Semenko’s
interests went to landscapes as a young girl,
then to her post-secondary studies in art
history and theology at MacEwan University.
The influences of her education can be seen in
the progression of her early works, which were
dark and spiritual.
“I thought my art had to be serious when
I just started,” which we see in “Reaching for
Understanding,” “Architects of the Universe”
and “Death.” The latter work was in part a
response to the untimely passing of her father.
“I felt the need to be sophisticated, in these
dark, deep abstractions that matched my
mood as I was searching for understanding,”
Semenko says.
The bridge piece between these themes
is composed of bright, light colours and
whimsical themes where “my inner child is
just having fun.” It’s titled “Ethics and Straw-
berries.” Her multimedia approach in the
painting incorporates beads, text, the spine
of a book, broken China, and black-and-white
photograph clippings. Her next experiment —
and expansion of the aforementioned “Inner
Child” — will have her work on a larger surface,
a canvas 69-by-50 inches, taking inspiration
in part from her grandmother’s garden.
“Every time I finish a piece, I say it’s my
favourite,” she says, looking forward to when
she’ll have a showing in a gallery space to ac-
commodate her use of texture and multimedia.
“I’d really like a space where people can have a
physical understanding of my work.” ED.