Granville artist Paul Hamilton's 30th exhibition on display in Columbus

After nearly 30 years as a painter, Paul Hamilton continues to find inspiration in the landscape around him.

Hamilton, a Granville-based artist, has his 30th art exhibition in full swing at the Hammond Harkins Gallery in Columbus, Ohio.

The exhibition features 25-30 paintings of Ohio landscapes — subject matter Hamilton is familiar with. Hamilton has been painting landscapes for nearly 30 years, he said.

"I'm very, very much a landscape painter at heart," Hamilton said. "I spend most of my time outside and that's when I do a lot of my thinking and my painting. I'll see something like the way the lights hit the snow and it just engages me so much that I have to come home and paint it."

Originally from Florida, Hamilton moved to Ohio in 1984 and shortly after college, he became a resident of Granville, Ohio.

Before solely focusing on painting as a career, Hamilton spent time designing interior retail spaces for companies and businesses including the Hard Rock Cafe and BMW. As part of that career, Hamilton spent time traveling abroad.

"That kind of jump started my painting career because I would go to these museums in these foreign places … and just get so excited and I'd come home and paint," Hamilton said.

While Hamilton has primarily been a landscape painter, his recent exhibition showcases only Ohio landscapes. For previous landscape exhibitions, Hamilton would travel to other states such as Maine, Vermont and Florida where he would find inspiration for his paintings, he said.

However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hamilton did not travel as much for the exhibition so it features familiar landscapes to him and his audience.

"I think people really enjoyed this show … because they can relate," Hamilton said. "It’s like 'Oh that’s my grandfather's barn I used to play in.'"

Hamilton spent over a year working on the exhibition and focused heavily on the level of detail of the paintings, making them more engaging, he said. To differentiate each painting, Hamilton said he spent much of his time seeking out interesting locations and compositions in Granville and central Ohio that were fresh.

"It's endlessly interesting because nature always brings a new look with every day. It could be cloudy or sunny or stormy," Hamilton said. "Within the realms it is a landscape and it's probably the same as the one yesterday that I did, but it’s look can be 100% different with just the effects of sun and light and early morning and stuff like that."

The piece that took the longest to complete out of the several paintings featured in the exhibition is "Ohio Symphony," which was composed of 55 individual metal square panels. The 12 foot painting is the signature of the exhibition and took Hamilton around two months to finish.

The exhibition is running at the gallery, located at 641 N. High St., through June 12.

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Granville artist Paul Hamilton's 30th exhibition displayed in Columbus