Luke Hannam was born in Oxfordshire in 1966 but spent most of his childhood in Derbyshire on the edge of the peak district. His initial training was at Chesterfield College of Art in the early 1980s before moving to Canterbury to study fine art. At Canterbury he was taught by hugely respected colourist and abstract painter Mali Morris (RA), and Rob Welch, both of whom had an important influence on his work. Morris introduced him to Patrick Heron, Dennis Creffield and Scottish Impressionist Tom Watt. Hannam later became Watts’ apprentice in North Shields shortly before he died in 1989. For Hannam these early years ignited his love of still life painting as a means of exploring colour and composition alongside the hugely important issue of touch and mark-making which have remained important elements of his work through to the present day. Creffield spotted his facility for drawing and encouraged him to make this a central aspect of his work. Hannam continued to paint throughout the 1990s with studios in Newcastle Upon Tyne and later in Camberwell but by this time he had begun to establish himself as a musician and became immersed in writing, recording and touring internationally with the influential and respected band Gramme; Gramme continue to release music and has released a new album called Discolovers. Hannam currently lives with his wife and three children in East Sussex, where he divides his time between painting and music, working from his studio in Rye. Hannam’s work has developed and changed many times over the years but has always been firmly rooted in drawing. He views drawing not simply as a building block but as a dynamic, ever shifting language of signs that inform his emotional journey and enable him to transform and evolve as an artist.