Whippersnapper w/ Hamish Coleman: 15th May, 2026

Hamish Cloleman is a Pōneke-based painter whose practice explores the notions of memory and nostalgia through these luminous oil paintings. 

Coleman uses a unique approach to image making by gathering source material from fleeting moments that he records on his personal camera. From these videos, Coleman then selects specific stills that capture a kind of in-between moment. Through the act of painting these recorded moments, Coleman interrogates the ways in which memory transforms into nostalgia and how memory itself morphs and shifts through time.

In his current exhibition at Season, Whippersnapper, Coleman presents a new body of paintings that continues in this ongoing exploration of these captured moments of time. Within the exhibition, Coleman draws on a variety of imagery, scenic landscapes, horses, dogs, the exterior of a house, and a hand holding a yo-yo. 

The presented final image, although holding this cinematographic quality, offers something alternative to that of a photograph—an image that has shifted through the act of painting itself. Coleman highlights this act of shifting through his use of interference pigments. Resulting in these ephemeral paintings that transform as one walks around the work. Asking the viewer to look twice, and sit in that moment of the fleeting in-between.

Maya caught up with Hamish Coleman about the show and his overall practice.