Hannah Dunnett draws cards and posters that illustrate Bible truths and verses and are gorgeous as works of art.
She is of course not the only one and is heir to a long tradition, going at least as far back as the sumptuous decorated manuscripts you can find in the British Museum. — some of our nation’s greatest treasures– or even, allowing for tradition to pivot a little, to the art of iconography or stained glass.
Someone sent me one of her cards recently, so beautiful, and recently I bumped into her at an exhibition. I was able to tell her how much I admired her stuff, and she kindly gave me a poster. A medical doctor, she set aside that career after her art began to sell and with kids at home.
What I love about her work is that it is beautiful. Personal taste comes in here of course but in my eyes her work is absolutely as concerned with being a visual feast as it is with celebrating the good news of the Kingdom of God. Because it’s about both, both strands reinforce each other.
Soon, I fear, she will pass in our small Christian world from ‘beautiful surprise’ to ‘I fell ill and I got the inevitable half dozen Hannah Dunnett cards’. But not quite yet, at least not in the backwaters I live in.
I don’t get any commission here and I am perhaps given to over-statement. But I am just delighted to meet someone doing their job so well (to my inexpert eyes). Buy now before everyone does.