Sean Hamilton’s paintings echo and reflect upon iconic American imagery that he grew up seeing. Working and living in Seattle, USA, he mixes bold colours, dynamic compositions and unexpected image pairing to ask the viewer to re-evaluate our underlying assumptions of American symbolism.
‘Myth’ presents Hamilton’s work as a way of addressing the viewers into their preconceived ideas around the romanticised narratives of the ‘American Dream’ and asks us as viewers in an international setting to reflect upon the current social landscape. The paintings act like satirical movie stills, balancing on the absurd and the uncomfortable. A still moment paused on a scene where something is about to happen, and the composition allowing us to, for a brief moment, capture the inside of Hamilton’s observations. This is reflected in the duality of imagery, hard and soft, fast and slow, feminine and masculine. These oppositions flicker between each other, gaining momentum until inevitably one fragment asks us to be still.
