Elaine Hamilton-O'Neal - Educational Background

Educational Background

In 1945, Hamilton graduated from Maryland Institute (now MICA) and went on to study for two years with Robert Brackman in New York as a member of the Art Students League.

In 1949, Hamilton continued her education at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City. She studied under the mentorship the muralist Diego Rivera. While there, she received a commission of her own and began working on a 47-foot mural she painted for the privately-owned Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende.

Hamilton dismisses any comparisons to her contemporaries or artists who worked in the first half of the 1900s. She was not interested in Picasso, she says, and while she admired the work of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, she mainly wanted to learn the techniques required for outdoor murals.

By the time Hamilton went to Mexico in 1949, she'd been married for seven years. In 1951, Hamilton returned to Baltimore, to present a solo exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. In 1952, she traveled to Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship to study painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, Italy. In 1953, when the Fulbright grant was extended for another year, she chose to remain in Italy for seven more years. After exhibiting in Rome, Milan, and at the Venice Bienniale, she found herself drawn to the Himalayas.