Ruth Hamill is a visual artist working with a range of techniques on canvas and on paper. Inspired by the ebb and flow of water, she intuitively explores her materials to express that which is liminal and ephemeral.
Hamill came to art late, leaving behind a career in corporate marketing PR in 2005 to follow a gut feeling that she was meant to be doing something different. She bought paints, joined a painting cooperative, and discovered her calling. After converting her porch into a studio, she began to develop her own process, starting with oils and eventually moving towards encaustic -- drawn to the medium’s translucency and smooth surface texture which lends itself naturally to depictions of water. Hamill worked exclusively with encaustic for ten years. As a complement to this body of encaustic work, which requires a cumbersome process, Hamill developed a parallel practice of work on paper, using nib and ink mark making, watercolor and gouache, and relief printing.
In 2007, Hamill had her first solo exhibition. She has since shown her paintings in eleven solo and two person shows in galleries in Chicago, Beverly, MA; Charleston, SC; Chicago, IL; Gloucester, MA; Ipswich, MA; Martha’s Vineyard, MA; Portland, ME; and Southport, CT.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Art New England, Artmag of the South,
and The Charleston Post and Courier, and has been included in group exhibitions in Cape Cod Museum of Art, Denis, MA; Copley Society of Art, Boston; Arts Club of Washington, D.C.; National Association of Women Artists, NY; Shore Institute of Contemporary Arts, Long Branch, NJ; and the Attleboro Arts Museum, MA, among others.
Hamill has participated in and received grants and fellowships for numerous artist residencies. Most recently she completed a residency fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC), in Provincetown, MA, supported by the Copley Society of Art, and at Sam Rit in Thailand. Other residencies have included Vermont Studio Center, for which she received a VSC grant, the Tin Ship in Breckenridge, and the Golden Apple Residency in Maine.
Ruth Hamill was born and raised in Chicago and currently lives and works near the water in May’s Landing, New Jersey.