Patrick Earl Hammie is an interdisciplinary visual artist—painter, printmaker, illustrator, curator—and educator who specializes in portraiture, storytelling, and the politics of representation. Hammie’s work reclaims Black agency and authorship through representation, abstraction, and pastiche to offer stories that expand notions of self, community, and others.
His works are in the collections of the David C. Driskell Center, John Michael Kohler Art Center, JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, Kinsey Institute Collections, Kohler Company Collection, Lawrence University, Purdue University, University of Illinois, and William Benton Museum of Art. He has exhibited in Germany, India, South Africa, and the United States, at venues that include California African American Museum, The Drawing Center, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Madlozi Art Gallery, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Kunstwerk Carlshütte, Bo Bartlett Center, and the Zhou B. Art Center.
He is the inaugural recipient of the Alice C. Cole ’42 Fellowship from Wellesley College, and was an artist-in-residence at the John Michael Kohler Art Center. He has been supported by fellowships and grants from the the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Midwestern Voices and Visions, Puffin Foundation, Tanne Foundation, the states of Illinois and Connecticut, and other private foundations.
Hammie was born in New Haven, Connecticut and has a BA from Coker University and an MFA from the University of Connecticut. He is currently a Professor in the School of Art & Design and Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.