"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