About


"Katherine Hamilton, once a professional dancer, is now a full time artist who lives close to Southwold, the town which she has so often celebrated in her art. After having her interest in dance aroused when she was a pupil at Dartington Hall School, she gradually became more interested in painting. In 1971, aged 17, she went to Florence to study for a year with Senhora Simi. Simi was the teacher of Annigoni, famous for his rigorously classical portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. 'It was another way of looking,' she recalls, 'but when I left it was necessary to throw off her technique, otherwise it imprisoned you.' After two years at the Byam Shore School of Art in London, She was drawn back to the stricter discipline and immediacy of dance and she worked for some six years as a dancer and choreographer - moving between Amsterdam, New York and Ethiopia. After this, she returned to painting. She moved to Suffolk in 1992, but has continued to travel as far field as Guatemala and Kerala to paint everything from beach football matches to bull fights. More recently she has found inspiration nearer home at Yarmouth's Hippodrome Circus and the north of England. Among her many admirers was P.D.James, who has written of her skill  at capturing movement, tension and mood through colour and form and of how the truthfulness of her vision 'draws us so powerfully to her art'."

Richard Webster (1950-2011)


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

  • 2005: The agricultural communities of Guatemala

  • 2006: Rural life and the small villages of Rajasthan, India

  • 2007: Fishing communities of Senegal

  • 2009: Life on and around the River Niger, Mali

  • 2010: Circus Exhibition, Time and Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth

  • 2010: Southwold and the changing seasons

  • 2011: Mawlamyine and its people, Burma

  • 2012: The deserted diamond mines of Namibia

  • 2013: The Volta Delta of Ghana

  • 2014: Landscapes of Britain

  • 2015: Landscapes of the southern Arctic Circle

  • 2015: Landscapes of New Mexico and Utah, USA

  • 2016-17: Winter Landscapes of the Arctic

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

  • 2021: Private 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

  • 2008: Documentary 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

  • 1985: The Christopher Hull Gallery, London

  • 1991-93: The Sue Rankin Gallery, London

  • 1994: Thackeray Gallery, London

  • 1999: Chappel Galleries, Essex

  • 2001: Chappel Galleries, Essex

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

  • 2004: Chappel Galleries, Essex

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

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

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

  • 2012: Mandell’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’

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

  • 1988-89: The Piccadilly Gallery, London

  • 1996: The New Academy Gallery, London

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

  • 1997: Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition

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

  • 1998: Cambridge Contemporary Art

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

  • 1999: Woodgates Gallery, Suffolk

  • 2000: Fry Gallery, Saffron Waldon, Essex

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

  • 2008: Salthouse Annual Exhibition, Norfolk

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

  • 2011: The Assembly House, Norwich

  • 2012: Holt 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