Present Tense

The Art of Memphis, 2001-Now

Hamlett Dobbins
Time Shows (he begins to think about time)
oil on canvas, 60X50

2001
Artist Hamlett Dobbins

Hamlett Dobbins is an artist, writer, and curator. He has worked as the director of the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College since 2001, where he curates exhibitions and teaches painting. His Gallery Management students coordinate a litany of local artists' exhibitions every Spring. In 2004 he founded Material Art Space on Broad Avenue, becoming an early pioneer of the art district.

Dobbins relates his method of painting to that of building with Lego blocks, constructing an image from shapes and colors in an effort to understand the meaning of his life's memories. "I use painting to focus on an experience and to wrap myself in the moment.  By building the experience I begin to understand what about the moment moved me to paint in the first place." Since 2002 his paintings have each been based on a specific experience with a particular friend or family member, denoted by the series of initials in their titles.

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