Susie Hamilton


Susie Hamilton is an English artist. She lives and works in London and is represented by Paul Stolper Gallery.

Early life and education

Hamilton, born 10 August 1950, studied painting at St Martins School of Art and Byam Shaw School of Art in London before reading English Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. She gained a PHd on metamorphosis of identity in Shakespearean drama in 1989 at Birkbeck.

Career

Artistic style

Hamilton’s style has been called ‘iconoclastic’ since her painting is a process of making and unmaking. A member of the painting collective Contemporary British Painting, Hamilton works with Hospital Rooms Arts and Mental Health Charity, painting murals in psychiatric intensive care units, contributing work to their charity auctions and leading workshops online and in hospitals. Hamilton has been called a "flâneur" since she observes from the sidelines, scrutinising tourists, shoppers, holidaymakers, diners, hen nights and other scenes of leisure. She has to work extremely quickly to catch particular movements and poses and this means that her figures are compressed, abbreviated and simplified and usually morph into something misshapen and grotesque. Of her work Hamilton has said "I often wanted to paint joy."

Selected projects

In 2015, Hamilton was artist-in-residence at St. Paul's Cathedral, London. Her paintings are represented in Picturing People by Charlotte Mullins and ‘On Margate Sands: PaintIngs and Drawings based on Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’, 2018.
In 2018, she made ‘Polar Light’, a large wall-painting for ‘The Junipers’ psychiatric unit in Exeter.
In 2020, she made a series of work showing doctors, nurses and patients facing Covid-19, some of which are now held by The Science Museum.
In 2021, she painted a triptych for Askew psychiatric intensive care unit in Hammersmith, with a filmed interview by Ben Luke as part of the WHO programme, “Healing Arts: The Future is Unwritten”.
In 2022, she completed 3 large paintings based on Chinese poetry for the central staircase of the new hospital in Tooting.
In 2025, Hamilton was among 52 UK visual artists invited to create work responding to the lyrics of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill for the Sound & Vision charity project, a fundraising exhibition for War Child. Her contribution was a piece titled And If I Only Could I’d Make a Deal With God.
Her paintings are held in public and private collections which include Murderme, The Priseman Seabrook Collection, The Deutsche Bank Art Collection, The Economist, The Bernard Jacobson Collection, Groucho Club, New Hall Art Collection University of Cambridge and The Methodist Modern Art Collection, London.

Selected solo exhibitions

Underground, exhibition and book launch, Paul Stolper Gallery, London

Selected group exhibitions

Soho Open, Great Pulteney Street Gallery, London

Selected publications

  • "The Self in Speech", Garageland 19
  • ’On Margate Sands: Paintings and Drawings based on TS Eliot’s The Waste Land’
  • "Nick Fudge and Susie Hamilton In Conversation", Turps Banana Magazine, Issue-18
  • "In Search of the Beautiful: The Art of Susie Hamilton" by Richard Davey, Image Journal
  • "Encyclopedia of Red" The Art Newspaper, ARTY 36
  • "Picturing People: The New State of the Art" by Charlotte Mullins
  • "Susie Hamilton" Anomie Publishing "Underground", Hurtwood, with texts by Matthew Holman "Windows", Arty, issue 48

Selected collections