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Brittany Ham
Brittany Ham is an artist based in San Antonio, Texas. She graduated with a BFA in Painting and a BFA Communication Design from Texas State University in 2012, and graduated with her MFA in Art from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2016. Currently, she works as a Lecturer of Art at Texas A&M University – San Antonio. She has exhibited internationally in South Korea, Germany, and the United States of America, and her work has been featured in publications such as New American Paintings, Friend of the Artist, BE Magazine, and VAST Magazine. In 2020 she was the spring Artist-in-Residence at the Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Residency Program/ Künstlerhaus Bethanien International Studio Program. Her art practice explores conventions of historical painting, abstraction, feminine experience, and figuration.
Resume (PDF)
MORE ABOUT THIS ARTIST
Artist Style: Visual Art: Abstract, Conceptual, Contemporary, Figurative, Illustrative, Landscape/Cityscape, Narrative/Historical, Nature/Wildlife, Photo Realistic, Representational, Social Commentary
Artist Medium: Acrylic; Drawing Media; Oil; Watercolor
Artist Statement of Work
Tell us about your work (style, approach, philosophy, subject and/or theme):
My creative research centers on the critical exploration of the presentation of feminine experience and investigates how historical practice may be subverted in a contemporary context to allow room for awareness, humor, and representation through a feminist lens. My identity as a feminist is closely tied to my practice. Through a study of humor and figurative manipulation I draw attention to the perceived fantasy of feminine experience in historical tropes of painting while confronting these perceptions with humorous observations of the reality of embodied experience. I am intensely interested in the role of women in art history and am devoted to questioning the role of women in historically male dominated modes of artmaking. As well, my work is ongoing research that is primarily engaged with the history of painting as a practice in which I am most concerned with subverting patriarchal narratives that have dominated the discipline.
In 2021 I became a mother. My pregnancy was shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, and I felt its lingering presence after my daughter was born while navigating the tides of new motherhood through a fog of restless claustrophobia, isolation, and longing. I felt an intense desire for closeness. I felt a deep need for distance. I felt my understanding of my identity as an artist changing minute-by-minute. I had a lot of time to think.
My recent practice is centered around the construction of narrative as a vehicle for the presentation of personal experience. The narratives I work with are often based in the confrontation of humor and trauma and engage with the anxiety of human embodiment. My work translates this narrative based practice through an investigation of change that comes alongside new motherhood. Figures in my work are depicted in ways that explore their awkwardness, their longing, and their tenuous grasp of their place in the world. Interior spaces are contrasted against the openness of nature to juxtapose the closeness of the known home against the desire to be outside in the world. Light wraps around the figures, closing in on their bodies as a physical manifestation of their internal contemplation. Iconography of parenthood is paralleled against the tools of creative practice to examine the dual identity of parent and artist. This work considers the various existential conundrums that arise from being a working mother and invites you to laugh at the uncertainty of it all.
