Artist's Resume

" A patch of weeds along a busy road, on a city sidewalk, or in a public park is something that often escapes attention, yet close-up these Urban Wilds depict a fascinating world of random shapes, bold colors, varied textures, and beautiful patterns. These types of natural distractions serve as a major inspiration in my work and provide escape from a world dominated by asphalt and concrete "

Artist's Statement:

I'm a Boston artist born and raised in Massachusetts.

I taught myself to paint at the age of 12 while growing up in the town of Westborough, Massachusetts. I continued to develop my skills and technique on my own over the years and went on to formally study Art in New York, at Hofstra University, where I earned a B.A. in both Art History and Film, with studio work in painting and photography. During and immediately after college I worked in the field of film and animation. I presently live and paint in the South End of Boston.

My Heritage:

My father is a Greek immigrant born and raised in Khartoum, Sudan and my mother is Croatian from Zagreb. My parents met while attending school in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and like so many other immigrants, came to America to find a better life. My last name, while not Greek in origin, is the legacy of my great grandfather, George Hamawi, who was born in Alexandria Egypt, but of both Greek and Syrian descent. The Hamawi name itself originates from the 3000 year old city of Hama in present day Syria. Hamawi literally translated means "from Hama". George Hamawi married Erifili Georganas, a Greek woman originally from Mytiline (the capital city on the Island of Lesbos). Erifili was the sister of the famous Greek painter Vasileios Ithakisios (Georganas). Ithakisios, my great uncle, was known for his magnificent paintings of Mount Olympus where he lived and painted (from a home he built in a cave on the mountain) for 20 years.

Because of that diverse heritage, I was exposed to a wide variety of cultures and landscapes at an early age, travelling often to see family in Africa, Greece, and Croatia. Most of my childhood summers were spent with my relatives in Istria, Croatia where I still visit very often for inspiration and to relax among one of the world's most beautiful coastlines.

My Artwork:

My most recent nature paintings were inspired from finding diverse and intriguing nature scenes along a roadside, by a shoreline, on a sidewalk, or in a city park. These fairly common, but less celebrated subjects like weeds, leaves, grasses, and rocks, when viewed close up, offer a glimpse into a more abstract micro-world of varying colors, patterns, textures, and shapes. Many of these familiar subjects can be found in even the most congested and inhospitable of urban environments, and yet due to their widespread nature, are routinely ignored. Through repetition, these patterns become ingrained into our psyche subconsciously and contribute to the human experience by virtue of how we relate to our natural surroundings and find comfort in the familiarity of certain everyday images.

My next series of nature paintings will be collectively titled "Urban Wilds" after both my 2007 Oil painting and my 2009 Copley Square mural. I'll be interpreting a wide variety of naturally occuring grasses, wildflowers, weeds, leaves, and anything green and growing through asphalt and concrete in the City of Boston. Part of the planning and preparation for this new series involves taking long walks from my studio every week. I typically walk for 4 or 5 miles to some lesser known part of our city and photograph the wildflowers and grasses I find, and bring some samples back to my studio. I'll be starting up a new blog on my site that documents this. I discover so many amazing new things about our city in the process and I think that might be interesting to others.