Katherine Hamilton

Waking before dawn on the banks of the Saramacca River a strange unfamiliar sound echoes from the surrounding forests, like thunder it triggers a sense of trepidation, the sound moves, growing closer and then recedes into the distance which both confuses and unsettles the listener. It is the call of the Howler Monkeys hidden and mysterious within this vast area of impenetrable forest. A place without humans, a refuge for the natural world.

Forests, valleys, gorges, forgotten places, I wander through often feeling like an intruder, not wanting to disturb but just listen and absorb, I make hasty notes in the attempt to capture what is around me.

There are no plans before a journey, just an arrival and departure date and an instinctive sense of direction. Whether across oceans or just a few miles up the road they are taken to renew one’s sense of wonder of the world.

These journeys are just the beginnings of trying to find a way of sharing what inspired me with the viewer, months and years of scraping off, starting again, throwing away and even then only a few will surface.

Katherine Hamilton
August 2025, Suffolk

Introduction

It is a measure of Katherine Hamilton’s stature as a painter that, while we inhabit the same easterly edge of England, a quicksilver terrain slipping between landscape and seascape, her pictures always bring me fresh discoveries.

Not that, in life or art, she ever stays put for long. The traveller Freya Stark, on her last great journey, wanted only ‘to see beyond the next mountain’. Kate is just the same - a restless spirit crossing the garden, or the globe, in pursuit of arresting images.

Since the mountains of Suffolk are clouds or waves, Kate wanders widely in search of geographical drama and new pictorial possibilities. A very painterly and colourist painter, her handling of pigment changes with the scenery and sensory experiences she wants to convey.

Artists are ageless - perennially youthful - and Kate is still the dancer who set up a balletic troupe in Addis Ababa. There is a feeling of great poise and balance and physicality in every creative thing she tackles. She swims in the North Sea early in the morning all year round

Like Freya Stark she is immune to SPIRIT OF PLACE 5 hardship, and positively (or negatively in my cosseted view) seeks it out - leaving behind Asian balm to end in a hut on a mosquito-ridden beach with a storm brewing; continuing to check into an African hotel after watching a river of ants teeming down the stairs and bearing away previous residents (spiders, cockroaches, rodents) from the bedrooms.

She reveals the preciousness of our planet, but there is nothing precious in her technique. Like a maker of wine, she tramples emerging pictures underfoot while working on multiple canvases at the same time. The Greeks say they ‘wrestle’ with each day, and a Hamilton picture is the outcome of similar emotional and experiential combat.

But just as a true work of art should retain a core of mystery, the travails of creation should never be visible. Like David Attenborough, Katherine Hamilton brings a far-flung and often inhospitable world to our living rooms as if by magic.

How wonderful to be able to enjoy such hard-won beauty in perfect comfort.

Ian Collins
2025

Katherine Hamilton CV

Professional Training

1971 Academy of Florence, Italy

1972 Byam Shaw School, London

1972-75 London School of Contemporary Dance, London

1976-80 Erick Hawkins’s Dance Company, New York

1980-81 Choreographer, Modern Dance Studio, Amsterdam

1981-82 Choreographer, Ministry of Culture, Ethiopia

1982-92 Painter, Italy / Pyrenees / Mallorca

1992-Present Painter, East Anglia

Notable Projects

2005The agricultural communities of Guatemala

2006 Rural life and the small villages of Rajasthan, India

2007Fishing communities of Senegal

2009Life on and around the River Niger, Mali

2010 Circus Exhibition, Time and Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth

2010Southwold and the changing seasons

2011Mawlamyine and its people, Burma

2012The deserted diamond mines of Namibia

2013The Volta Delta of Ghana

2014Landscapes of Britain

2015Landscapes of the southern Arctic Circle

2015Landscapes of New Mexico and Utah, USA

2016-17Winter Landscapes of the Arctic

2020-21 Public commission for the Old Hospital Project, Southwold

2021Private Commissions

Publications and Television

2002 ‘Artists at Walberswick: East Anglian Interludes 1880-2000’, by Richard Scott

2004 ‘Coastal Journeys 2001-2004’, by David Buckman, Chappel Galleries, Essex

2005 ‘Making Waves: Artists of Southwold’, by Ian Collins

2005‘Coastal Inspirations’, Anglia Television

2006 ‘The Dictionary of British Artists since 1945’, by David Buckman

2006 ‘Southwold: An Earthly Paradise’, by Geoffrey Munn

2007 ‘Journeys East to West’, by David Buckman (foreword by PD James), Chappel Galleries, Essex

2008Documentary on Seago, Anglia Television

2010‘Water Marks: Art in East Anglia’, by Ian Collins

2011 ‘Power of Place: Dartington Hall School Artists 1926-1987’, edited by Alice Leach

2012 ‘Southwold 2010-2012’, by Ian Collins, Mandell’s Gallery, Norwich

2015 Illustrated talk at Southwold Methodist Hall covering work from 2002 to 2015

2016 ‘Landscape Journeys Inside and Out 2013-2016’ by Andrew Lambirth (foreword by Dick Pope), Chappel Galleries, Essex

2018 ‘A Compelling Dance of Shapes’ by Andrew Lambirth, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire

2020 ‘Katherine Hamilton and the Classical Response’ by Andrew Lambirth, Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire

Solo Exhibitions

1985The Christopher Hull Gallery, London

1991-93The Sue Rankin Gallery, London

1994Thackeray Gallery, London

1999Chappel Galleries, Essex

2001Chappel Galleries, Essex

2004 Chappel Galleries, Essex, ‘Coastal Journeys 2001-2004’

2004Chappel Galleries, Essex

2007Chappel Galleries, Essex, ‘Journeys East to West’

2010 Time and Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth, ‘Circus Exhibition’

2012Mandell’s Gallery, Norwich, ‘Southwold 2010-2012’

2016-17 Chappel Galleries, Essex, ‘Landscape Journeys Inside and Out 2013-2016’

2018 Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire, ‘Sense of Place’

2020 Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire. ‘Katherine Hamilton’

2023 Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire, ‘Perspectives - Close and Far’

2025 Chappel Galleries Essex, ‘Spirit of Place’ 8th November - 7th December

Group Exhibitions

1988-89The Piccadilly Gallery, London

1996The New Academy Gallery, London

1996 Chichester Cathedral (highly commended award), exhibition organised by Christie’s, London

1997Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition

1998 Palma Square, International Art Exhibition, Princeton, New Jersey

1998Cambridge Contemporary Art

1998 Chappel Galleries, Essex, ‘Walberswick: Postwar to the Present’

1999Woodgates Gallery, Suffolk

2000Fry Gallery, Saffron Waldon, Essex

2005 Messum’s, London, ‘Painters and Sculptors of East Anglia’

2007 Chappel Galleries, Essex, ‘Southwold, the East Coast’

2008Salthouse Annual Exhibition, Norfolk

2011 St James Court, Norwich, ‘Inspirations’, exhibition organised by Jarrolds department store

2011The Assembly House, Norwich

2012Holt Festival Art Prize

2014 Buckenham Galleries, Southwold, ‘Art and Soul: Treasured Paintings of Southwold’

2017 Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, ‘Contemporary and Post War British Art Auction’

2018 Campden Gallery, Gloucestershire, ‘Winter Exhibition’

Public Collections

Jarrolds Art Collection

UCS Art Collection

Museum of Time and Tide Art Collection

EDP Art Collection