Spotlight Artist

Terence Hannum

South
Artist profile photo
Featured in New American Paintings

Artist Statement

My paintings stage encounters where systems fail under the weight of what they attempt to contain. Working in oil on canvas and paper, I construct dense, speculative environments where invasive hybrid forms proliferate beyond control. Drawing from digital fabrication, toxic flora, and psychoactive plants, the imagery shifts between accumulation and collapse as forms swell, erode, and mutate across the surface.

Large-scale compositions become immersive fields of pressure rather than windows into space. 3D printers recur throughout the work, not as symbols of precision, but as overwhelmed systems overtaken by the very growth they produce. Extrusions tangle, spill, and knot into dense masses that engulf the machines and push outward into pictorial space.

Through layering and reworking, the paintings carry a sense of systems breaking down over time. Images hover between formation and dissolution, where technological control gives way to excess. These works reflect a present condition in which ecological realities, human intentions, and technological systems have become increasingly unstable and entangled.

Artist's Additional works

Works shared by the artist outside of their featured New American Paintings selections

Featured artwork
Featured artwork
Terence Hannum's featured artwork 1
Terence Hannum's featured artwork 2

Resume

Education

  • MFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, US
  • BA, Florida Southern College, Lakeland, FL, US

Residencies

  • Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, US

Solo Exhibitions

  • Simulations, SPCE Gallery, Baltimore, MD, US
  • Perfume our Burial, Lost Origins Gallery, Washington, DC, US

Selected Group Exhibitions

  • Artificial, Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD, US
  • Botanical Readiness, GAG, Chicago, IL, US
  • Juicy, Purple Window Gallery, Chicago, IL, US

Collections

  • Thomas J Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, NY, US
  • DePaul Zine Collection at DePaul University, Chicago, IL, US

Discover more artists from the South

THE MAGAZINE

Explore our magazine to discover exceptional artists

Open magazine with text, modern illustrations, and a list of artists on a pink background.
View issues

Call for Artists

Submit your work for consideration

New American Paintings is a juried exhibition-in-print and digital, presenting the work of 40 emerging artists in each issue.

View competitions

Your gateway to new art

Discover tomorrow's art stars, today

Two books on a wooden table with a modern decorative sculpture in the background.

PRINT + EARLY ACCESS DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION

$159/YEAR

DIGITAL SUBSCRIPTION

$99/YEAR OR $10/MONTH

Each issue of New American Paintings features forty artists selected through our juried competitions—presented in a beautifully curated, full-color publication. Subscribers receive six issues per year, plus exclusive online access to current and past editions. Are you a collector? Consider our premium subscription and receive our museum-quality printed publication + access to each new digital issue two weeks before its general release.