Genevieve Hamel

Originally from Quebec, Geneviève moved to North Carolina in 1997. Her new adventure with her family gave her the opportunity to change the direction of her career as an Agronomist and developed her passion for art and design. She began designing and building custom wood furniture for her own pleasure and remodeling an 1875 plantation home with taste and refinement. After exploring a few states, the family put down roots in Kansas City for seventeen years. She decided to go back to school and obtained her degree in Interior Design with a specialization in Kitchen Design. While still actively working as an artistic kitchen designer for a design firm in Kansas City, Missouri, Geneviève challenged herself to participate in her first art exhibition in 2020 with her small wood drawings. The local response to her art was overwhelming and she decided to continue her development. Back in her home country for only two months, Genevieve continues her artistic approach with oil painting on wood and rushes full time to discover new horizons. With the love of wood and nature, small drawings of animals and various everyday subjects on wooden panels were born. They are characterized by the constant play of negative space created, by exposing the background of the black painted wooden panel and letting it become an integral part of the drawing. The lines of white or colored pencils are minimal and calculated highlighting their complexity or simplicity, their volume or finesse, their curves or their stiffness in order to create a dimensional and mysterious effect to the drawing. This type of technical drawing is very precise and rather intense to create. Genevieve wanted in the last two years to branch out with a much more flexible medium to obtain greater freedom of action while continuing her art with the same concept of negative and positive effects but this time with oil painting. There she developed her own glazing techniques and the manipulation of painting knives. The depth effects became more intense, the colors much more vivid and the glazes and touches of impasto give these paintings a vibrant touch, a generous texture and an incredible dimensional effect. A pleasure to look at.