KIM HAMLET

Artist + educator
Seattle, WA

VISUAL ART

Recent works
Film photos
Sketchbook

TEACHING

Classes + workshops
Teaching approach

INFO

About + contact

Soul’s path, gouache on paper

What we pass to our children, wax pastel and gouache on paper

Sitting with grief, gouache on paper

Sun steaming through windows, tempera on paper

Private conversations, watercolor on paper

My current painting practice is focused on infusing memories, dreams, and emotions into the canvas. Each piece begins by meditating on the feelings that surface when recalling those moments in time — the color palette and brush strokes reveal themselves from there.

Abstract painting was something I admired for a long time, but did not fully connect with until I saw the work of Dorothy Napangardi at the Seattle Art Museum. Diving deeper revealed the stories and colonial context of how contemporary aboriginal art came to be. After forced displacement and assimilation, the elders created paintings using abstraction as a means to communicate, yet obscure, traditional wisdom, memory and ceremony.

Living in a time where those in power exploit whatever they can, and destroy what they cannot, we are asked how our ancestral knowledge, culture, and intuitive wisdom can be protected from the proliferation of late stage capitalism. Abstraction is a means of communicating through art — by obscuring the meaning, sacred knowledge, our hopes and feelings, can be safely shared.

Materials:
Goauche, tempera, watercolor and wax pastel on paper

Spring and Summer, 2025