Jo Hamilton

I moved from Scotland to Portland in the 1990s after graduating from Glasgow School of Art. I continued to make art and eventually began to experiment using crochet, a craft my Gran first taught me when I was six. I make large scale wall works mainly within the western fine art categories of portraits, nudes and landscapes, in a medium that speaks to the everyday. My technique, which evolved over time with each work, is a slow one, taking many hours to build a subject one knot at a time. It allows me to create figurative yet tactile art objects that can appear to be within the conventions of western fine art and traditional craft but are intended to be subversive. I portray anonymous masked women as superheroes hiding in plain sight, gigantic soft but muscular reclining male nudes, venerable local and historical matriarchs, and cityscapes defined by the breakneck pace of modern human production. Out of concern for the environment my work is primarily made from post-consumer materials.