Elaine Hamilton-O'Neal - Professional Background

Professional Background

Stylistically, Hamilton passed through a number of stages. Her work evolved from realistic portraiture in the 1940s to pure abstraction in the 1960s and thereafter. Having won the prize for portrait painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1945, it was natural that she went on to study in New York with Robert Brackman, who is a master of realistic portraitures and other figurative painting.

In the late 1940s to early 1950s, the influence of Diego Rivera is evident in the earthy textures and colors, as well as in the heavy, sculpted, quasi-cubist forms of her increasingly abstract paintings (see right). Meanwhile, the scale of her work increased, also as a result of her study with Rivera.

In the early 1950s there are other canvases that show nightmarish, contorted, bloody-looking images suggestive of slaughter, but unidentifiable bodies or body parts, somewhat in the manner of Francis Bacon. One painting shows a man with massive hands folded on his knees. Others, in a transitional stage of her work, are broken into planes, cubist-style. A painting from Mexico, which she says is the dead child of her maid, is a shadowy face, surrounded by leaves and swirls in deep shades of crimson.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Hamilton exhibited her paintings throughout Italy at the Venice Biennale, Rome, and Milan, as well as the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. She also exhibited at the Pakistan Arts Council in Karachi. Seven years later, she found herself drawn to the Himalayas. In 1956 and again in 1958, Hamilton was an invited exhibitor at the Venice Biennale. During her extensive travels in the 1950s, she remained prominent in the Baltimore contemporary art scene, winning the Popular Prize in the Baltimore Museum of Art's Maryland Artists Exhibition in 1952 and again in 1959.

Hamilton had solo exhibitions of her work in major galleries and museums all over the world. The various cities that exhibited her work includes Rome; Milan; Turin, Italy; Florence, Italy; Mexico City; Osaka; Tokyo; and Karachi, Pakistan. She was featured in numerous multi-artist exhibitions in these cities as well as in Paris, the Whitney Museum in New York City, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC.

Around 1960, she took up a personal approach to action painting and it is for her paintings in this later, abstract expressionist manner that she is probably best known. She is sometimes classed as a lyrical abstractionist. In 1968, she won first prize in the Biennale de Menton in France.

As Hamilton's presence in the art world continued to grow, visual art students looked to her for inspiration. Her influence extends across Europe and around the world. One individual in particular was a young Pakistani artist, named Ismail Gulgee (or Guljee, as it is sometimes spelled). Partha Mitter wrote of Hamilton's influence in her book, Indian Art, published by the Oxford University Press. "Impressed by the visiting American painter Elaine Hamilton, Guljee enthusiastically plunged into action painting..." Jane Turner also wrote of Hamilton's influence on Gulgee in The Dictionary of Art. "In 1960, Ismail Gulgee, known for his portraiture, began experimenting with non-objective painting (in the manner of Jackson Pollock) after working with visiting American artist, Elaine Hamilton." According to David L. Craven, Distinquished Professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico, Hamilton became something of an ambassador in South Asia: "Abstract expressionism was promoted as a universal style in Pakistan during the 1950s by a U.S. artist named Elaine Hamilton."

While Hamilton was living in France, she gained the professional admiration and support of Michel Tapié de Céleyran, who was a highly influential French critic and respected painter. Tapié was an early advocate of European Abstraction Lyrique, also known as tachisme, which is generally regarded as the European equivalent of abstract expressionism. He was descended from an old, aristocratic French family; notably, he was the second cousin of the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Tapié was a generous critic, championing the works of young and upcoming artists. He organized and curated scores of exhibitions of new and modern art in major cities all over the world. In 1952, Tapié was the curator of Jackson Pollock's solo exhibition in Paris, which took place at the Studio Paul Facchetti.

The French lyrical abstractionist or tachiste, Georges Mathieu was another artist of whom Tapié was an early champion. In 1952, Tapié curated Mathieu's exhibit at the Stable Gallery in New York. Mathieu studied literature and philosophy before switching to art at the age of twenty-one. After painting realistic landscapes and portraits, he developed a highly distinctive Abstract Expressionist personal style, which grew out of an emotionally driven, improvised and intuitive act of painting. He was often compared to Pollock and said of the artist, that he considered him to be the "greatest living American painter."

Tapié co-founded the International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, Italy in 1960, with architect Luigi Moretti. The Center was a facility for the study and exhibition of art, as well as for the publication and dissemination of critical, investigative, or theoretical works on art. The institution lasted until 1987, ending upon the death of Tapié.

In 1960, Hamilton created her first purely oil on canvas abstract painting, entitled Burst Beyond the Image, after an expedition to K2 in Pakistan. This painting was Hamilton's foray into the abstract world of action painting, which dramatically records the gestural action of painting itself. Today, the painting remains in Hamilton's personal collection.

In late 1960, full of inspiration after her most recent Himalayan adventure, upon her return to France, she quickly created many more of these huge "action" canvases in preparation for solo and group exhibitions in Japan. About this time, Hamilton caught the attention of Tapié and became the benefactor of his generosity when he exhibited her paintings at the Fujikawa Gallery in Osaka, Japan. The exhibit took place from April 12–18, 1961 and was presented in collaboration with the Gutai Group, which was an association of avant-garde artists representative of Japan's post-war art world. A second showing curated by Tapié was presented at the International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, Italy.

The 2006, Benezit Dictionary of Artists is emphatic in its praise, stating the following of Hamilton. "A globetrotter who has scaled the heights of the Himalayas, Hamilton makes profoundly serious work. Clearly part of the movement known as 'lyrical gestural abstraction', her painting is full of verve and invention and manifests an extraordinary gift for colour and substance."

Touring her home in 2009, Martha Thomas, writer with the Baltimore Magazine, was able to view Hamilton's many works within the artist's private collection. Rather than hanging on the walls, Hamilton's earlier paintings were found resting safely stacked against them.

Most of the paintings on display in Hamilton's lower level gallery were her later works: bright and energetic splashes of color with swirls, drips, and slashes of paint on canvases measuring six feet long and four or five feet high. A few of the canvases were round. Hamilton stated that she wanted to challenge herself and "get out of the square thing." In some, color bursts from the center like a supernova against a dark background. In others, the fury of colorful strokes completely covers the canvas.

Her work has been described as abstract expressionism and "action painting," but Hamilton says the Buddhist monks she knew in Tibet described it best: "It's meditation in action," she says. "That's not a contradiction. When you meditate, it doesn't mean empty. It's making space for things to come in."

Hamilton sustained and developed the abstract approach to painting for the rest of her life. Today, the majority of her work is in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama. Her oil on canvas work entitled, Silent Space, which was completed c. 1969 is part of the collection belonging to Sarfaraz Aziz, who is the director of the brokerage firm of Aziz Fidahuesin & Company in London. Other pieces remain in public and private collections in Austria, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Switzerland and the United States.