BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL, INDEED. Patricia Mayhew-Hamm's experimental, multi-media work continues to be her current focus, though she has delved into various styles and techniques across her career.

For the first time in her 50-year long, award-winning career, beloved local artist Patricia Mayhew Hamm will have an encompassing retrospective exhibit of more than 50 paintings and prints, ‘Bold and Beautiful – A Retrospective,’ held right in the Valley’s Heyde Center for the Arts,

Instrumental in the Banbury Art Crawl in its beginnings, active at the Eau Claire Regional Art Center, and a well-known local workshop leader and teacher, Mayhew Hamm has more than left her mark on our slice of the Midwest’s art scene. 

Mayhew Hamm – and her work – is no stranger to the wider art scene, though. Having exhibited nationally and at numerous juried art shows, her work spans several decades and styles, and will more than likely keep transforming as she continues to create. For her, creation is at the core of who she is, and how she’s lived her life.

Now in her eighties, Mayhew Hamm has created more than 1200 paintings, and simply wants to downsize while sharing her work with the community. Thanks to her 1990’s self who started numbering her pieces then, she has been able to identify artworks more than three decades old, the Heyde Center exhibit holding ‘#2’. 

When she first moved to Wisconsin in 1974, she was in the throws of oil painting, creating painted barns and winterscapes. She continued in the style until she found watercolor and acrylic, and never looked back. 

More recently, she delved into abstract and multimedia work, and this is where she has truly “soared,” she shared.

“Recently, my work has been all about experimentation, I just love it,” she said. “Experimentation has been my muse.”However, her career has not been without its ebbs and flows in creativity, she shared. Last year, going ups and downs in her personal life and health impacted how she was able to create – if she did at all. Working through the creative slump, she began and tossed out numerous works before hitting a stride, leading to a collection of three paintings, finally. 

Last year, the Pablo Center purchased those three paintings. 

Mayhew Hamm has truly loved workshopping and holding classes for local artists too, most of whom are retired art teachers. For those artists who Mayhew Hamm works with, she noted the base of knowledge and skill already built up from schooling and teaching but said many of the retired teachers didn’t always get to spend much time honing their own personal craft during their teaching careers. She remembered one woman who had come into her workshops a handful of times, walking in once and exclaiming, “I’m back, I’m back, I’m back!”

Though she hasn’t resumed workshops out of her Chetek studio yet, taking a pause near the beginning of the COVID pandemic, she certainly plans on continuing them soon. 

“It doesn’t mean I’m done,” she assures. “I don’t want to quit. I enjoy teaching so much.”

Patricia Mayhew Hamm’s retrospective exhibit is free to the public, its reception was held on July 7, and will continue to stretch across the Heyde Center’s gallery until August 17. For folks interested in any of her pieces, the Heyde Center will assist in any sales. 

Visit the Heyde Center's website page on Patricia Mayhew Hamm's exhibit, open for viewing during open hours.