Patrick Earl Hammie

I specialize in portraiture, storytelling, and the body in visual culture. Since 2007, I’ve examined personal and shared Black experiences, systems of knowledge production, and the politics of representation as a visual artist. I engage these topics through representation, abstraction, pastiche, and narrative, using techniques informed by critical theory and postcolonialism. My practice includes oil painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, illustration, and curation. My stories expand notions of self, family, and community. As a Blerd, I draw upon history, mythologies, music, and speculative fiction. 

Since 2018, I’ve accepted commissions from institutions for portraits of individuals who have played important roles in history. These include Romare Bearden for the Smithsonian Institute’s Men of Change: Power. Triumph. Truth, a ten-city traveling exhibition that depicts twenty-five Black men who have changed American culture, and Albert R. Lee, an advocate for Black students navigating Jim (Jane) Crow Laws at the University of Illinois.

My current projects examine nostalgia for both the Black cultural awakening represented by Soul Train, and the resurgence of white nationalism represented by lynch mobs. These works reintegrate Black agency and authorship with histories of both Black horror and triumph to generate new spaces for Black courage, pride, and pleasure.