Hannah Rose Thomas is a British artist and human rights activist. A Forbes 30 under 30, her work has been exhibited at the UK Houses of Parliament, European Parliament, the International Peace Institute in New York, Lambeth Palace, Westminster Abbey, and The Saatchi Gallery. Three of Thomas’ paintings of Yazidi women were chosen by HRH Prince Charles (now HM King Charles III) for his exhibition “Prince & Patron” in Buckingham Palace. She has been named a winner of Vogue’s Future Visionary award, and is a winner of the European Parliament’s Women’s Leadership Award. Tears of Gold was featured by Google Arts and Culture to mark the UN’s Official 75th Anniversary Program, “The Future Is Unwritten: Artists for Tomorrow.” Thomas is currently a UNESCO Art Lab for Human Rights and Dialogue PhD Scholar at the University of Glasgow.Read Full Biography
Photograph by Beowulf Sheehan. Used by permission.
As I sobbed my way from one grim life to the other, I felt increasingly certain that this was beautiful art doing beautiful things in a terrible world. Bravo, Hannah Rose Thomas.
Waldemar Januszczak, The Sunday Times
One of Hannah’s aims is to capture not only the courage and stoicism of the women who have suffered so much, but also the nobility, dignity, and extraordinary compassion that many of them manage to retain, despite their traumatic experiences. I very much hope that this beautiful book will help enable the Yazidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian women’s voices to be heard, as well as to highlight the issue of the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in general.
HRH Prince Charles, prior to his accession as HM King Charles III
Hannah Rose Thomas is a remarkable painter and story-teller. Containing the portraits of survivors of extreme violence (and sexual and gender-based violence in the case of many), this book centers on their individual stories and, by extension, the horrific atrocities experienced by their communities. There may well be tears, but those tears are often unaccompanied by other emotions. There is so much control and a natural humility, the effect is simply startling. It is not what the observer commonly expects – and Hannah captures the authority within each survivor perfectly and beautifully.
