Biography

Billie Hamilton has been an expressionist painter from the day she picked up her first crayon. Over the past 50 years she has explored a number of mediums, including oil painting, watercolor, printmaking, medical illustration, digital haiga and montage,  as well as assemblage and bas relief sculpture. For several years she has worked primarily in soft pastel, using highly saturated pigments in non-figurative composition. A stickler for archival and light-fast materials, she practices her art with an environmentally sensitive attitude.

I’m in love with the feel of soft pastel—its immediacy and direct physicality. I enjoy the whole process of preparing the panels, laying in the strata of pigment, scratching and scraping my way through the surface to find that elusive and risky plane of discovered Beauty. I don’t mind getting filthy with color. I don’t care if it’s 3 a.m. and I’m still on my feet in the studio. I’ve never been so happy.

Billie attended the San Francisco Art Institute in the early ‘60s, earned her doctoral degree from the University of California at Irvine. Her studio is located in San Diego’s historic Gas Lamp District.

Brokers Building Art Collective
4th and Market Streets, San Diego, CA
Built in 1889. 14-foot ceilings!

contact: billiehamiltonfinearts[at]gmail[dot]com