H. Fleming
Photo credit: Molly Huson
BIOGRAPHY:
Hamish Fleming was born in Adelaide, South Australia 2002. Fleming graduated from high school in 2019, after being awarded and attending the National Summer Art Scholarship earlier the same year. After a brief trial of tertiary art school, he decided to embark on educating himself independently, with the informal aid of established artists serving as mentors. Within the first three years of leaving school, his work was exhibited in thirty different exhibitions. In 2023 he won the Young Artist (under 25) category at The Adelaide Parklands Art Prize for Nightwalk and was acquired into the City of Adelaide Contemporary Art Collection the following year with Round the Side. He has since taught several workshops at both Wilderness and Seymour College as well as being Wilderness Artist in Residence in 2022. Most recently, Fleming has been a finalist in The Lennox St Art Award 2025 and the Live Well, Die Well Art Prize 2025.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
The combination of grunge aesthetics and classical realism seems unlikely at first, but these two aspects blend seamlessly in the work of Adelaide-based painter Hamish Fleming. Gravitating to the unregarded by a fundamental curiosity and driven by an obsessive pursuit of understanding, much of Fleming’s work depicts scenes and objects from day-to-day contemporary life. The works often depict some form of subtle, intriguing juxtaposition. Despite his decidedly contemporary subject matter, in regard to his approach to making paintings, he staunchly embraces tradition. Fleming works solely from life, without the use of any reference photos or digital aids and in addition to this, makes the majority of his paints himself from raw pigments. This working methodology resonates with Fleming’s blunt artistic demeanour, drawing upon what he finds himself presented with seeking to understand the inherent quality of both materials and subject matter, embracing things for what they are, rather than what they aren’t. The resulting works possess an almost palpable atmosphere that entices the viewer to look deeper into the work, loosing themselves in an array of gritty but effortlessly harmonious details.
FEATURE:
REGARDING COMMISSIONS AND ACQUISITIONS:
H. Fleming’s commission books are currently closed. For commission requests or acquisitions, please use the contact form on this website. Commissions will be accepted or declined at the discretion of the artist.
“Expect atmospheric classical arrangements with a dark, grungy, modern twist - what you’d get if the Dutch masters inhabited a 21st-century Australian sharehouse”
- Timothea Moylan, The Note, 2023
Photo Credit: Timothea Moylan