Huddie Hamper

Biography

Huddie Hamper (b.1999, Chatham, UK) is a figurative painter and musician. After completing a foundation course at UCA Rochester, Huddie went on to study painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, graduating in 2021. His first solo exhibition, The Outset, was held at Lilford Gallery, Canterbury in 2022 and he contributed work to the White Columns Benefit Exhibition, New York (2022). Hamper is also the lead singer and a guitarist in The Shadracks with whom he has released two LP records. Huddie lives in London and continues to paint at the Billy Childish Studio in Chatham.

As an emerging artist, Hamper continues to refine his technique, drawing directly on the canvas in charcoal and then building layers of paint to achieve an evocative and nuanced image. He also has a background in printmaking, portraying figurative and natural scenes. The result is a fluid rendition of fleeting moments in time.

Hamper desires that his works speak for themselves, and refrains from imposing pre-determined meanings, interpretations and readings of his creations onto his viewers. The joy of painting for him derives from its ability to express aspects of his current life and psychological states; it is in essence, an intuitive process and a means of discovery. Hamper hopes that through the aesthetic forms of his works, such as the balance of line, shape and colour on canvas, he can bring together dividing lines in terms of culture, society, on a local and universal level. As he says, “there is an urge to create, to describe forms in paint that feel natural to me. I aim to communicate the beauty, and sometimes darkness that is in the world around us.”