My work from the early-to-late nineties was the out-working of mulling over a simple and troubling paradox - that is, the ongoing co-existence of good and evil, of violence and peace. Several simple shapes provided a rough vocabulary for much of the work - squares, circles, and sometimes "X"’s. In these shapes and symbols (I have used the bulls-eye alot as a generally understood symbol of violence, harm or destruction), I found an almost inexhaustible wealth of meaning, symbolism, and mystery. That the pieces were interpreted in so many different ways by their viewers seemed to reflect, at least in part, how much of life is touched by the opposing forces I mentioned above.
A couple of years ago, the focus of the work shifted slightly, more directly exploring the presence of mystery, a transcendent reality. I have long been attracted to the spare, beautiful simplicity of some Japanese art and the 20th-century minimalist (I use the term fairly loosely) painters, and at the same time I am drawn to the rich, mysterious quality of icons and medieval art - I think about what a modern icon might look like, something that represents a veiled truth, something holy, some mystery. For myself, the things that seem to hold (or give forth) the greatest sense of mystery are those things that are very simple, and quite ordered. For example the Shaker aesthetic that is seen in their homes and furniture-making, the Japanese sand "garden", the Amish quilt all hold for me an amazingly powerful, heartbreakingly sweet attraction.
This focus of thought has influenced my decision to simplify my compositions. Color, line, and brushstroke; order, simplicity and structure have become the media for reaching toward the not-completely-knowable. I liken some of the work to small, quiet rooms that hold the presence of a person or idea who has since left - like smelling a hint of perfume or the smoke of an extinguished cigarette. Other pieces are strongly tied to music, which also lends itself to communicate things in a fluid, beyond-words, not-fully-knowable way.
Besides music (largely jazz), my work has strongly been influenced by Flannery O’Connor, the brilliant and short-lived fiction writer from the fifties. She told the weirdest, darkest (and funniest) stories that reflected her beliefs in absolute truth, morality, evil, and hope in a redemptive God without a shred of sentimentality or sermonizing.
Most recently, I have been working on a group of paintings
largely inspired by the story of a small, nearly abandoned mining town
in Pennsylvania. It has had an underground fire raging beneath it since
the late sixties, and it is projected to burn for possibly hundreds of
years. All my "buttons" – those parts of me fascinated with violence, mystery,
beauty and transcendence – have been pushed by this small town’s story.
Kate Hammett August 2000
Kate Hammett received training in both fine arts and illustration. She graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City in 1981, having also studied at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE and the Arts Student League, NYC. After balancing both illustration and painting for several of years, she phased over to her first love, painting, full-time in the late eighties. She works from her studio in Princeton, NJ and lives with her husband Greg and two dogs in nearby Plainsboro.