Vincent Hamel Works on Paper (1972-2012) Opens at Howard Scott Gallery

Howard Scott Gallery will present a survey of Works on Paper, 1972-2012, by the Dutch artist Vincent Hamel.

Vincent Hamel work has been represented in this Country by Howard Scott Gallery since 1996. The artist, born during the decade of the 1930’s in Amsterdam, still lives and works in that city. Hamel, an abstract, reductive painter, possesses an unusual sensitivity to color which is accorded an important role in his respective bodies of works.

In the forthcoming exhibition the artist will present thirty works dating from 1972 to 2012. The drawings of Vincent Hamel, takes a humble and homey –that is to say, typically Dutch- pride in scale. Many of the works are no larger than eight and a half by eleven inches sheet of paper, nor do they need to be. There is in these works a love and understanding of density, tactility and delicacy of materials.

Hamel layers acrylics, gouache, wax crayon and, most memorably, ball-point pen to give body to gentle shifty fields of color and texture all of which involve a paper support and are characterized by intimacy of scale to produce a sharp focus on both the specific physicality of his chosen working materials and on his mark-making and other aspects of the “touch”. In recent works, he contrasts hues having strong differences in value, using a geometric division of the field.

Vincent Hamel work was part of the recent exhibition Material Color (2009) curated by Mary Birmingham at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ. Mr Hamel's work is included in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, in addition to numerous other collections in Europe and the United States.