Janet Hammill Artist’s Biography
I was born in the U.K in the Yorkshire Dales in 1956. My family farmed 300 acres and my love of horses began there. I can remember being placed astride the farm’s draught horse when just a toddler. Later we were to migrate to Australia and my family owned a farm in the Snowy Mountains. I spent my teenage years, riding in the bush, and attending pony club and competing with my horse in local shows.
There have been artists in both sides of my family for several generations and I started painting in oils when I was twelve. My art education took place over four years I was at Alexander Mackie College in Sydney where I majored in Painting, Canberra School of Art, and Phillip Institute of Technology (now RMIT) Though trained as an abstract artist, I spent much of my time life drawing where I was particularly interested in anatomy. An artistic turning point for me was viewing G. W. Stubb’s “Whistlejacket” at the Tate, London where I was inspired to commence a career in equine art that combined my love of horses and knowledge of their confirmation and anatomy with my skill as a figurative artist. I have recently been spending my early mornings at Flemington watching training sessions of the horses from Blackiston Racing Stables.
I have exhibited at Hawthorn City Gallery, York Street Galllery, Galleria Artistico Italiano, The Ufitzi Gallery,The Women’s Gallery, Panoply Gallery and Manyung Gallery. I have worked to commission for many years and my work is represented in many private collections both in Australia and the U.K. I have participated in Northcote Contempory Art Show, The Not the Archibald Show in Fitzroy and the Birregurra Art Prize. I have worked as an art teacher in community based adult education as well as a secondary art teacher throughout Melbourne and in London. | 
