THE art of Hannah Morris is a growing presence on the York scene, her work shot through with a vivid sense of yearning.

From this weekend, she is exhibiting at According To McGee in Tower Street. “This well-deserved solo show is an opportunity for this increasingly complex artist to flex new-found skills and to consolidate the ground-breaking building blocks that have brought her the attention of contemporaries and collectors alike,” says gallery co-owner Greg McGee.

“Hannah has been sparking around the local art scene for the past four or five years. She’d always come to our shows and studio sessions; we were impressed to see her skills sharpen under York College’s tutelage, and we were delighted when we heard she got a First from Leeds Met.”

Greg believes Hannah’s work could “easily have come from a seasoned exhibitor used to mounting shows in London or the continent”. “That’s what’s great about the northern art scene: there’s a new type of hunger that propels artists to create great work and maintain a standard that quite honestly would have been a dream even ten years ago,” he says.

“Hannah’s trajectory is very much in the ascent, and the fact that she’s focused, skilled and hard working means that her future on the national scene is pretty much assured.”

After studying fine art at Leeds Metropolitan University, Hannah, above, is now living in York, where she works primarily within two processes, painting and printmaking.

“These methods inform each other, with a desire to explore and realise the physical qualities of paint,” she says.

“In the work, my intention is to allow the surface of colour to create gorges of texture and build a visual dialogue between the image and viewer.

“My work is rooted in the figurative form because of an interest in the human body, our relationship to it and the space surrounding it. I work with photographic images, memory and drawings that portray sensitivity to the figure in its nude form and which reflect the liveliness of a living subject, existing in motion.”

Printmaking is a “great way of making work because it is led by the process”, suggests Hannah. “Often through exploring the process, interesting marks or happenings occur in the image, changing my initial direction,” she says.

Hannah’s exhibition will be launched with a private view this evening from 6pm to 9pm and will run until May 30.