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Katherine Hamilton Southwold Pier (detail) |
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About the artist
KATHERINE HAMILTON (b. 1954)
 KATHERINE HAMILTON, once a professional dancer, now a painter, was born in Midhurst, Sussex. Her mother's brother was a teacher at Dartington Hall and when she was eight she was asked whether she would like to go to a conventional boarding school or to Dartington, the liberal, co-educational Devon establishment founded by the Elmhirsts.
Dartington won and it was there that her interest in dance, movement and the arts was encouraged. Dartington became her universe. But by the time she was fifteen, however, its non-academic tendencies began to worry her parents so they sent her to Southover Manor School in Lewes, Sussex, a strict all-girls alternative.
Under the inspirational dance teacher at Southover, Philippa Hawkins, Hamilton continued to develop her interest in dance, but art gradually became her preferred option and, on leaving Southover at 16, she entered the studio of the Sussex-based artist Peter Norton. In 1971, aged of 17, she went to Florence in Italy to study for a year at the Academy with the legendary Signorina Simi. Simi was the teacher of Pietro Annigoni, famous for the 1953 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II which was infused with Simi's rigorous classical technique. 'It was another way of looking.' she recalls, 'but when I left it was necessary to throw off her technique, otherwise it imprisoned you.'
In 1972 she spent a year at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London but here she felt she was not taught so much as encouraged to produce wonderful paintings for which she did not have the technique. Seeking greater fulfilment she would attend the London School of Contemporary Dance in the evening. There, you could not 'get away with doing whatever you liked. When you are moving across a room in a leotard you can't lie. You either move or you can't move.' Liking the strictness of this routine, she auditioned and was accepted, studying ballet, modern dance, choreography and music notation.
Over the next six years she continued to draw and paint but worked principally as a professional dancer and choreographer, running her own dance company and study in Amsterdam. After working for a time in Ethiopia, where her husband had been appointed field director for Save the Children, she began to feel that there was nothing more she wanted to do as a dancer and decided to concentrate on her art instead.
With a portfolio assembled over several years she was able to persuade the dealer Christopher Hull that she merited a solo show, which took place at his Motcomb Street gallery in Belgravia in 1985. Since then she has painted full-time, travelling periodically in search of inspiration but returning in recent years to Southwold which she has made her home.
Among the artists she admires are Rembrandt, Piero della Francesca, van Gogh and Rothko. More recently she has been taken by the paintings of Balthus and Edward Hopper. She has no blueprint for her artistic future. 'I have always just gone for what I felt I wanted to draw or paint. I have a passion for what I want to paint now, but not a plan.'
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Some of Katherine (Kate) Hamilton's paintings can be seen on her new website, www.katehamiltonartist.co.uk
Adapted from David Buckman's introduction to Coastal Journeys, 2001-2004 by Katherine Hamilton, A Chappel Galleries Monograph, 2004
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