Katherine Hamilton's new work, while still engaging with the sense of place that has long been one of her strengths, delves deeper into the intimacy of her surroundings. Although she has continued to travel, particularly in Scotland, her work now tends to focus on subjects near at hand. Instead of taking the long view of landscape, she gazes intently at the ground beneath her feet, or the abundant vegetation beside the path. This examination of the modest and often overlooked has brought new insights to her painting.
The hedgerow is subject rich in potential for an artist, but is often treated as a structure within a painting - as, for instance, in the early hedgerow paintings of Roger Hilton (1911-75). In her Hedgerow, Hamilton makes the constituent plants her entire subject, and all sense of wider ambience is excluded. There is still a strong sense of surface and depth, with the butterflies feeding on the blossom at the front of the picture, and the plants falling into darkness behind. The bright livery of the three Red Admirals lighting up the interior gloom is dramatic and unusual, and Hamilton takes a well-earned place in the iconography of the British hedgerow.
There are several paintings on related subjects in this new group, Fallen Crab Apples chief among them. Here are yellow and green orbs on a dark ground articulated by sticks, leaves and twigs: we might be looking at a forest floor, rather than the surface of a domestic garden. The fruits are arranged and yet not arranged, laid out with rhythmic impulse and intensity, a handful touched with decay, though the brown-tinged skins only add to the visual variety and richness of the composition. Old Man's Beard and Wild Rose are two further hedgerow subjects, all-over compositions of concentrated focus, of decorative pattern falling into deep space. These paintings are worked over in the way an Abstract Expressionist painting is constructed, with every part of the surface activated, as it is in a Jackson Pollock painting for instance, though without any other stylistic resemblance.
Hawthorn is focused on the tree's blossom. The composition, as in so many Hamiltons, is by no means obvious, with any-angled branches giving the painting a dynamic quality and sense of movement. There's even a patch of sky. The delicacy of the blooms is exquisite, bringing a sense of Japanese fullness yet restraint to the patterning. The slight but distinct spikiness to some of the flowers (the stamens protruding between the petals) echoes the thorns of the parent bush. Hamilton has a gift for depicting sharp-pointed forms, as witnessed by Winter Sea Holly. However, in this painting the actual plant is depicted in a kind of conversation with its shadow, which complicates the design and enriches the content.
Teasel and Cobweb must refer to one of those autumn mornings when the field spiders have been out slinging their hammocks from every salient projection, and the inhospitable teasel is gentled with spider silk. Meanwhile Webbed Thorn is appropriately skeletal and threatening, for this web belongs not to a friendly spider but to the voracious micro ermine moth caterpillar. This creature swarms over young hawthorn shoots and devours them, leaving the tree looking blasted but with an eerie beauty, like something out of Miss Haversham's abandoned wedding breakfast.
Shell Cluster, Colonsay is one of the most beautiful, memorable and decorative of this latest group of paintings. Here the shells are deep piled on the beach and appear to have just been washed by the tide which reveals their form and colour with exceptional clarity. Colours and shapes are at their most controlled, harmonious and vibrant. People sometimes think that 'decorative' is a term of disparagement. Nothing could be further from the truth. Matisse, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century, was unequivocal: 'A picture should always be decorative.' Hamilton applies this rule to very good effect. Her work grows in stature.
Andrew Lambirth
