Francis Hamel paints exquisite pictures but he also has an innate curiosity, using literary concepts in a painting without the pictures becoming mere diagrams. He paints using a variety of ideas and subjects – terraces from the Himalayas; still life compositions; pastoral landscapes; paintings based on early English paganism and portraits of rare Longhorn cattle. In spite of these disparate themes, there are beautiful visual analogues that tie the work together and create a natural and logical progress from the formal Oxfordshire gardens to the Himalayan terraces.
