The mixed-media oil-paintings of Alice Hammell, rich in texture and color, are kinesthetic in their visual deliveries.

Alice, who ran a surgical unit as a former nurse, brings the knowledge of chemistry to her craft. If she applies metallic ink, for example, she may subsequently oxidize it to create a unique surface. She continually reinvents her technique and her medium, often incorporating scavenged materials such as bark, computer mother boards and fabric to create integrated abstract and figurative paintings. Her most recent works—landscapes, flowers and nudes—are encaustic or hot-wax paintings. The encaustic technique is ancient. Sometime between 100 and 300 BCE the Fayum mummy portraits of Egypt were painted with this method. Sixth- and seventh-century encaustic icons also exist. Beeswax is mixed into pigment. After its application to canvas heat is applied to seal the surface. Whereas the ancient process used heated tools, Alice uses a heat-gun. She considers the process “exciting” because the application of heat affects the imagery in unforeseen ways.

Commenting on her process, Alice states, “The surface of my paintings become as textured as the surface of the earth or a desert-weathered face. Marks emerge.” The act of painting is discovery. By engaging the inert materials of canvas and medium, she happens on the image that becomes more fully apparent as her process proceeds. Thus the conjunction of three constituents—her exploratory initiative, the surface and the medium—conjures abstract and figurative representations from an intangible creative core. The effect is images, absent of well-defined line which seem to solidify from dreamtime and abstracts with soft-bodied blocks of color.

Alice’s palette, rich in earth tones—yellows, rusts, oranges, reds, ocher, sage, teal, glacial whites and grays and sky blues—is one of her signature marks. Her colors alone have the power to evoke land and water, fire and ice, desert and lake, sky and horizon in both representational and abstract modalities.

Alice, who is self taught, began her explorations in art as a photographer. She had many friends who were artists, a number of them painters. Their influence, the lure of color and texture and the endless possibilities for exploration of technique and medium caused her to change from photography to painting. Whether figurative or abstract, whatever the medium or technique, her paintings are mystery, beauty and illumination.