KAREN HAMMAT
Location:
Yankalilla SA, Australia
ARTIST BIO
For Karen, painting has been a lifelong endeavour from her earliest forays with the paintbrush as a kindergartener to her current life as a full-time artist.
In 1998 she embarked on studying for a degree in visual art and on completion in 2005 she began to change the balance between her practice as a psychologist and her arts practice in favour of the arts.
She has been a finalist in a number of prestigious art prizes such as the Glover Prize and the Art2Life International Juried Art Exhibition. Her art features in private collections in Europe, the U.S. and Britain as well as Australia.
She adores abstract art and is captivated by colour and markmaking.Her practice involves working intuitively, immersing herself in the painting experience and striving to capture and record a glimpse into the fundamental energies from which everything arises.
Her art practice also includes some portraiture as well as fibrecrafts created from the wool produced on her Yankalilla property. She can be found most afternoons working in her beautiful hand-built, cob, spiral studio/gallery in Yankalilla, South Australia.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My art practice is driven by a passion for colour, texture and the natural world. whether spinning dyeing and felting wool or painting abstracts, I see colour, form and texture functioning as the elements of a roadmap designed to lead the viewer to a sense of something known but unknown, remembered yet forgotten.
My paintings feature many layers where elements have been added or removed to create a sense of richness and history. Over the course of my artistic career I have learned to work intuitively and listen for a voice of inner-knowing that, if I am lucky, will guide me to a harmonious expression of those elemental energies that underlie all things, and allow my paintings to sing in a manner with which others might resonate.
