Over the years this desire has never waned. Even the same location can time and again leave me with a fresh sense of awe. What has changed is my understanding of and appreciation for what nature brings to me. As life has become more complex I value the hours I spend in the mountains painting for the opportunity they give me to clear my head, calm my thoughts, center myself and become fully present in the moment and in my life.

We humans so often find ourselves wrapped up in convoluted dramas that at their basis need not exist. Our thoughts can so easily induce stress, negativity, depression, even paranoia. My connection to nature helps me, if not avoid such difficulties, to move through them so that I may retain my sanity and well being.”

Education

• 2000 Painting Workshop with artist Willamarie Huelskamp; Santa Margherita, Italy
• 1999 Honors BFA in Painting and Drawing, Minor in Art History, Special Studies in Architecture; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
• 1998 Semester of studies in Studio Art, Art & Architectural History; Universita de Lorenzo d’ Medici, Florence, Italy
• 1996-7 Painting workshop with artist Ed Maryon; Monteray, CA
• 1994 High School Honors degree with Distinction in Art; Rowland Hall-St. Marks; Salt Lake City, UT

Juried Exhibitions

• 2008 Utah ’08: Painting & Sculpture, Rio Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• Utah Watercolor Society Fall Show, Art Barn, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2007 Salt Lake Community College President’s Art Show, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2006 Salt Lake Community College President’s Art Show, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2005 Traveling Exhibit with Utah Arts Council
• Utah Watercolor Society Spring Show, Eccles Community Art Center, Ogden, UT
• The Regional 2004, St. George Art Museum, St. George, UT
• Utah Watercolor Society, 2004 Fall Show, Park City, UT
• Eccles Community Art Center Statewide Competition; Ogden, UT
• New & Emerging Artists of Utah Show; Salt Lake City, UT
• 2003 St George Regional Art Exhibit; St. George, UT
• Eccles Community Art Center Statewide Competition; Ogden, UT
• 2002 Eccles Community Art Center Statewide Competition; Ogden, UT
• 2000 Eccles Community Art Center Statewide Competition; Ogden, UT
• Springville Museum of Art’s 76th Annual Utah Spring Salon; Springville, UT
• 1999 The Deseret News Landscape Art Show; Salt Lake City, UT
• University of Utah Student Show, Salt Lake City, UT

One & Two Person Exhibitions

• 2009 New Oils and Watercolors by Hadley Rampton, solo show, Phillips Gallery, SLC, UT
• 2008 New Work by Hadley Rampton, Sweet Branch Library, Salt Lake City, UT
• One Woman Show @ Wolf Creek Gallery, Wilkerson Fine Art, Eden, UT
• 2007 Hadley Rampton & Dave Hall, Two Person Show, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2006 One Person Show, Sagebrush Gallery, Ketchum, ID
• Two Person Show, Loge Gallery, Pioneer Memorial Theatre, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2005 One Person Show, Sagebrush Gallery, Ketchum, ID
• Two Person Show, Gallery At The Station, Ogden Union Station, Ogden, UT
• “Gamma di Colori”, solo show, Idaho Falls Arts Center, Idaho Falls, ID
• Hadley Rampton & Kathy Peterson, Two Person Show, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• "Italian Watercolors", solo show, Cafe Molise, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2002 "Visions of Trees". solo show, Chapman Library, Salt Lake City, UT
• “Impressions“, solo show, Don Brady Drive Thru Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• “Watercolors & Oils”, solo show, Park Café, Salt Lake City, UT
• “Watercolors From Italy“, Avenues Arts and Wellness Gallery; Salt Lake City, UT
• 2000 “Wintry Willows”, Avenues Arts and Wellness Gallery; Salt Lake City, UT

Group Exhibitions

• 2009 Commissioned to paint piece for “Not Just Another Pretty Face”, Salt Lake Art Center Fundraiser, Salt Lake City, UT
• “21st Celebration of Art & Soup”, Sheraton City Center, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2005 “Grounds For Paint” group show, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• Holiday Group Show, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2004 Art in the Home of Patty Ashton, group show, Salt Lake City, UT
• Kris Wilkerson Fine Art, group show, Huntsville, UT
• Storefront Galleries, group show, Provo, UT
• “Art in Pilar’s Garden” group show, Salt Lake City, UT
• Coral Canyon Arts Festival, Coral Canyon, UT
• 2003 Six Person Show, Gallery At the Station, Ogden, UT
• "Floor to Ceiling" group show, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• Group Show, Kris Wilkerson Fine Art, Huntsville, UT
• "Open Studio/Garden" group show, Symeon Colessides' Carriage House, Salt Lake City, UT
• Art in the Home of Patty Ashton, group show, Salt Lake City, UT
• 2002 "Over the Sofa", group show, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• Patty Ashton's Holiday Group Art Show, Magpie's Nest, Salt Lake City, UT
• “BIG”, large works group show, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT
• “Art in Pilar‘s Garden“, group show, Salt Lake City, UT
• Olympic Group Show, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, UT

Awards

• 2006 Juror’s Award, Utah Watercolor Society Fall Membership Show
• 1998-9 University of Utah President’s Award for Outstanding Scholastic Achievement
• 1998 Honors Society of Phi Kappa Phi
• 1995-9 Dean’s List, University of Utah
• 1994 George Fox Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Arts, Rowland Hall-St. Marks

Art Related Work

• Current Position: Fine Art Consultant at Phillips Gallery; Salt Lake City, UT
• 2007 Participated in “337 Project”, (Temporary Art House Collaboration), Salt Lake City, UT
• 2006 Official Juror, Salt Lake Arts Festival; Salt Lake City, UT
• 2003-2004 Board Member of Utah Artist Endowment Campaign Committee
• 1999 Commissioned Paintings for Shirley Chetwood, Boise, ID
• Mural work in home of Marybeth Stromberg; Salt Lake City, UT
• 1996 Book of Drawings Documenting Town Club’s Permanent Art Collection; SLC, UT

Publications

• 2009 “Artistic Engagement”, Exhibition Review, “Artists Of Utah; 15 Bytes” online publication, February 2009 edition
• 2008 “Hadley Rampton Presented By Wilkerson Fine Art at Wolf Creek Resort Gallery”, video, Ogden Valley Magazine.com., March, 2008.
• 2006 “New Art International”, A Compendium of Recent Works by World Contemporary Artists
• 2005 Featured Artist, “Artists Of Utah; 15 Bytes” online publication, October 2005 edition
• “21 Under 31”, Southwest Art Magazine’s Annual Emerging Artists Issue, vol. 35, #4,
• “One Artist’s Investigation of Color”, Senior Honors Thesis, University of Utah

Collections

• Aspen Transitional Rehab, Meridian, ID
• Rowland Hall – St. Mark’s School, Salt Lake City, UT
• Law Firm of Preg, O'Donnell & Gillett, Seattle, WA
• Rooker, Mohrman, Rawlins & Bailey, Salt Lake City, UT
• Jones Waldo Holbrook & McDonough, Salt Lake City, UT
• Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll, Salt Lake City, UT
• Hutchison & Steffen, Las Vegas NV
• Private Collections in Boston, MA; New York, NY; Denver, CO; Boise, ID; Sun Valley, ID; Oakdale, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Seattle, WA; Anchorage, AK, throughout Utah.

Affiliated Galleries

• Jake Dent Gallery, 41-801 Corporate Way #3, Palm Desert, CA, 760-776-8051
• Kneedler-Fauchere Design Studio, 868 South Broadway, Suite 108-5, Denver, CO 80209
• Kris Wilkerson Fine Art, Huntsville, UT, 801-745-9557
• Phillips Gallery, 444 E 200 So, Salt Lake City, UT, 801-364-8284

Artistic Engagement

Exhibition Review: Salt Lake City
Hadley Rampton at Phillips Gallery

by Curt Hawkins

Original Article : http://www.artistsofutah.org/15bytes/09feb/page7.html

Fresh from a morning of making turns in the fresh snow of the Wasatch Mountains, Hadley Rampton sits among her oil paintings and watercolor and ink drawings on display at Salt Lake's Phillips Gallery. "I usually try to paint every morning, five days a week. But today, fresh powder. I had to treat myself." My count is that she has already sold 5 of her wonderfully executed watercolor and ink drawings, created during her visit to Spain this summer. And the remaining pieces are stunning. More than a few of her oil paintings are also marked with sold tags.

Rampton began drawing as a child while reading the textbooks of her mother, who was earning a degree in Art History. She says she was perhaps a little bit different than her friends sometimes reading and drinking-in the wonderful color plates of her mothers textbooks. Ballet was her thing until she was 13 years old, when the time came to fully commit to the stringent regime of an acolyte ballerina. "I was too active out of doors to commit to such a thing." She played tennis, swam competitively, ran track and grew to love the outdoors and her beloved Wasatch Mountains. Math and science also drew her away to sit for hours with the books of Leonardo, Einstein and other great creative minds. She also sketched the whole time: "It found me. Art I mean. There was no other way."

Through out high school and college Rampton became too much of a formalist for her liking. She also committed "too many years to the study of architecture. It stifled me but forced me to render near perfect lines. It can also make one aware of perspective."

"Architecture, at first was my grasping for stability. Then I was drawn outdoors. The study of the Renaissance gave a formality and structure . . . I had graduated [in 1999]; attended Dave Dornan's workshop in Helper. I was basically a figure painter then it happened outdoors. I was in Italy, Florence. It came to me: you are going to be an artist. Then I started wandering. I wanted it all, to paint the streets, the canals. And once I was outside I never wanted to go back in. And landscapes became my passion . . . And I will stay outside. It is my total energy source."

Rampton's current exhibition seems of two parts. One is her landscapes of several subjects: aspen trees, and a variety of alpine and pastoral settings. She jokes that her friend, prominent artist, Connie Borup, gave her an "aspen addiction."

Much more than "aspen addiction" is displayed in all of her paintings of glorious landscapes. She masterfully paints a pair of aspens against clear blue sky.|0| It is her use of exotropic shadow that gives the trees their lovely perspective. It is interpretive using a very difficult process of white pigment gently shaded with grays, a hint of magenta and coal black. It might look simple and easy. But it is a difficult process masterfully applied. There are wisps of dead feathery branches. Sparse leaves cluster in some areas. Other leaves of many different hues stand alone, others dot small wisps of branches, proportioned in quick, single-stroke-gestures, if you will. It is perfect, "energy in repose."

There is tone and texture in the under-painted sky; it is an understated light source that authenticates the illusion. Rampton's brush becomes the mediator between the subject scene-color and texture- the very essence of the aspen trees that she obviously loves. Susan Swartz, Scott Christianson, David W. Jackson and others, ad nauseum, have painted and drawn aspen trees. But here is the difference: One knows, a priori, that Hadley Rampton has skied, hiked, painted and worshipped among these aspen trees. |1-3| It is an artistic engagement that is palpable.

Rampton's ink and watercolor scenes in Spain and Italy are a remarkable counterpoint to her landscapes. "I love Europe. I ride the train, always with my sketch pad, pen and watercolors. Sometimes I get lost. And you know they can be the best times. I paint my way out. Somehow arriving back at my hotel with more than a few sketches. It was in Italy, I became tired of my formal, rather studious adherence to perfect proportion, perspective and tight structure. My wandering in the villages, sitting in the cafes I decided that I needed to be looser. Less formal. To gesture, rather than proscribe the perfect image."

Gesture. Flow. Gauguin made the statement: “Nature’s appearance shows us…there are noble lines, false lines…a straight line suggests infinity, a curved line limits creation…Colours explain still more to me. Some tones are noble, some vulgar- some harmonies suggest tranquility, some excite you into doing something bold.”

Rampton's years studying architecture were not wasted. Each alleyway, each street scene -- particularly, "Interior Charles V. Alhambra" |4| -- is what one might call formalist while maintaining the gesture. Her shadowing and diaphanous washes seem free of obligation to the interior architecture. One might guess wrongly, that the washes utilize gouache, not watercolor. Rampton says, "We have to care furiously about every painting that we do." It is obvious that she does, melding creative practice and technical application. Her style is clean, sustained without being repetitive. One is struck with the fact that Hadley Rampton is only 31 years old. What wonderful surprises will she share with her admirers in the coming years? If it does take 10,000 hours of painting to become a master, according to Malcolm Gladwell, Rampton probably is only a few hours away.

Hadley Rampton's landscape paintings and watercolor drawings will be at Phillips Gallery through February 13. See more of her work at www.hadleyrampton.com.