NDG ART HOP!

This Saturday May 27 & Sunday May 28 all are welcome to my open studio 11am to 6pm located at 2000 Northcliffe. Please use the direct entrance on Maisonneuve! There is an opening party Friday eve at the Benny Library 7-9pm. See you soon!

open studio #7 at 2000 Northcliffe
***use Maisonneuve entrance!***
Check out works in progress!
“the star” oil on panel 2020 will be on display FRIDAY MAY 26 7-9pm at the BENNY library

spiritual care

“Mental Health” acrylic on canvas 90″x90″ 2023

For the past year or so, I had the privilege of working in spiritual care at a psychiatric hospital. I ran spiritual discussion groups on several floors for teenagers and adults. We talked about what our minds and hearts thought and felt about creation, attention, purpose, non-violence, anger, the soul, friendship, love, lies, the truth, life, dreams, good & evil, the afterlife, listening and modes of thought.

I loved hearing what patients had to say, both in our group meetings and during our one-on-one conversations in quiet corners on closed units, while walking down by the river or when they dropped by my office.

Here is a painting I worked on back at my place on those long dark nights after work.

BBAM!

πŸ’€AFTER LIFEπŸ’€
group show at @bbamgallery
808 Atwater, MTL, QC
ON VIEW NOW:
Rest in Peace
acrylic on panel
80″ x 80″
2021
NOW AVAILABLE ON ARTSY:
https://www.artsy.net/artist/jennifer-hamilton
This piece came about last year on my days off while I was working in Spiritual Care at the Lakeshore General Hospital. My work at the hospital was to provide emotional, spiritual and moral support to patients and their families who were going through medical issues and in many cases they were in palliative care. It was heavy and lonely since for a lot of last year we were all living in lockdown and it was hard to connect with friends, family and community. It was also a very different world inside the hospital than outside so I found it impossible to share what was going on. Instead, I focused my attention on the great mysteries of sacred geometry using pencil on panel to trace out both perfect grids of circles and very chaotic yet highly entangled knots in four mirrored panels. Then I meticulously connected all of the lines together and filled in the negative spaces with acrylic paint. I am so excited to share this work publicly for the first time at BBAM! gallery.
You can see it now!!
πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ’€πŸ’€

reflections on the year

rest in peace, acrylic on panel, 80″ x 80″, 2021

This year, 2021, I returned to a vocation that had been calling for a while during a most unusual time. Before I moved up to the woods I completed a theology degree at McGill University and a year-long internship at a hospital where I learned how to do Spiritual Care, or what used to be called chaplaincy. The ongoing pandemic nudged me to apply for work at a hospital. It seemed like the right thing to do given that I had just spent several years working independently on my art and I had no family to care for. I was honoured to join the frontline workers at a small hospital filling in for another chaplain who was off on maternity leave from January to November of this year. It was a tough job and truly fascinating. It is impossible to share the stories & silences from the very intimate experiences I had with the patients, families and staff at the hospital or the structural shifts that happened in my life as a result. On my days off, since everybody was under lockdown, I had a lot of hours to spend in my studio. This is the only new painting I made this year. A very large four part work on panel that began with a grid of lines and circles and became a puzzle of curves, interlacing imperfectly over geometric lacy constructions. It is very big! I hope that some day I will get to see it on a wall but today I laid it down in the yard behind my art studio in Little Italy in MontrΓ©al/ Tio’Tia: Ke and snuck up to my neighbour’s balcony to see it all at once and to take this picture to share with you. We all know that art is something that must be experienced and that little pixels take away the surprise and feeling tone of the true painting but it is the only way that I can share this work with you right now as we are hibernating and hiding from mysterious Omicron. I hope that you stay warm and protected this winter and that you find ways to stay connected. All we have is each other and even those ties that bind will all break eventually. RIP 2021.

the fall

Have you been waiting for some external structure to take over for your skeleton? It’s that time of the year. Remembering other falls, other conditions and simplifying the present experience. Here is a work in progress, just started on vellum. Threads to bind and tether, mutually agreed upon gazes. Bingeing on non-violent communication and following in the footsteps of the Fool. What’s next?

spring cleaning

Here are some little “quilt paintings” from the vault. I made these in 2004/5 while living in a basement on Rivard Street while I worked by day as a jewellery designer. They are mixed media on ~6″x8″ canvasses that I bought at the dollarama. Eventually I cut them off the frames because they were falling apart so they are now variable sizes.

revelation, illuminated!

I am a little bit shy to share this because it is so close to my heart, but if you promise to keep this very quiet, you may know that I have taken the first tentative steps embarking on a journey that has been in the works for quite a long time. It is an illuminated manuscript of the book of revelation, created through a contemplative process mixing sigils, sacred geometry and intuitive markmaking. This is going to take a long time and it will eventually result in a beautiful bookwork, a folio of prints and seven large, intricate drawings. Work in progress!!

2020

pivots, acrylic on cotton paper, 9″x19″

You know what I was not expecting? That after spending so many years hiding in the woods and choosing to come back to Montreal to participate in civilization, that the world I was so ready to rejoin would shut down. Of course, we were all caught by surprise this past year and had to recallibrate on deep levels. I ended up back in the woods, having no opportunies in the city and being unable to access my studio for many months. Luckily I was able to return to the mountain where I had already spent so much time alone to wait out the uncertain time, checking the news nonstop once the internet was hooked up. I worked in the summer months at a local greenhouse and raised a few chickens in my own garden. Near the end of the summer, a dear friend visited and I realized that I needed to start really making art again. I was frozen for a lot of the year but I thawed out and things started flowing. Here are the paintings and drawings from this weird year. πŸ’›

the star, acrylic with oil glaze on panel, 30″x40″
resonant worlds, acrylic on panel, 4@10″x10″
twin flames, acrylic on panel triptych, 24″x48″
quatrofoil, acrylic on cotton paper, 9″x14″
ring of fire, acrylic on canvas, 20″x20″
fireflower buds, acrylic on paper, 12″x20″
today, acrylic and UV paint on canvas, 20″x20″
firedrop, acrylic on cotton paper, 9″x19″
the weight of dark waters, acrylic on panel, 20″x24″
starpod, acrylic on panel, 16″x16″
all the leaves are rainbows, watercolour on arches paper, 20″x30″ *sold*