Deedee Hampton

“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.”

~Georgia O'Keeffe

 My intuitive, dreamscape paintings spring from the “well” within, often surprising me with fascinating images. Meaning shapes seeing and my work provides contemplative insights into the inner landscape. 

In a serendipitous moment in 2005 I happened upon some vintage postcards in a small rare bookstore on St. Simon’s Island, Ga. I was fascinated by the messages on the back-written in 1901-1910- they were very polite & subdued in comparison to this day & age- was passionate love throbbing beneath “fondly yours, Ethel”? Was the postcard picture of a lonely night scene with a car driving over a long dark bridge a way of saying, "I’m lonely, I REALLY miss you?” The pictures and the messages capture a moment in time & space that we, as voyeurs, can imagine into our own story. The postcards can also convey a sense of setting for the inner landscapes that we experience. Thus, I began my series of vintage postcard paintings. "Sometimes the painting story evolves from the postcard image or message and other times I know what I want to express & I look for a postcard that fits". I use stamped figures of women to represent an archetypal Every Woman. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines archetype as "the original pattern or model of all things of the same type.”  I wanted to use a woman of no particular ethnic or socio-economic background to express the explorations of our inner landscape- motherhood, lover, friendship, happiness, sorrow, death, spirituality, loneliness, ageing etc. but always with hope & tenderness.  By using multiple facets of symbolism I intend for the viewer to find layers of enchantment with each viewing. "Meaning shapes seeing- the images a viewer sees within my paintings evokes a feeling that gives the painting meaning to the viewer." Rather than tell an obvious story my narrative paintings give the viewer enough material to make up their own.