Chatham Meade Kemp has been an abstract painter in Hattiesburg, MS, for over 20+ years. She has had over 100+ exhibitions of her artwork. Her work is currently represented by Brown’s Fine Art in Jackson, MS, and Queen City Art Gallery in Meridian, MS.

Chatham’s contributions to the art world have been widely recognized including winning two Mississippi Arts Commission Artist Fellowship Grants, $1,000 prize for best in Abstract Painting at the Fall 2025 Mississippi Art Colony, inclusion in the Mississippi Museum of Art’s Mississippi Invitational, and numerous professional development awards for her to paint on location in Kona, Hawaii; Cortona, Italy; and Madrid, Spain. Her work has been included in National Juried exhibitions, including most recently, the 2025 USM National Juried Art Exhibition. She is also a proud member of the Hattiesburg Women’s Art Collective.

In 2007, Chatham Kemp received her Master's of Fine Arts degree in painting from Indiana University in Bloomington where she had a full graduate fellowship and her Bachelor's of Arts degree from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2004.  She has taught painting and drawing at William Carey University for over 19 years, where she helped launch the art program on the Hattiesburg campus in 2011.

It is her pleasure and privilege both in teaching and artistic production to give back to her native South Mississippi. Chatham Kemp has contributed to the arts in various capacities, in addition to teaching, including adjudicating grants and hosting events for the Mississippi Arts Commission, serving on the Hattiesburg Arts Council board, and contributing to charitable auctions for both hospitals and museums, among other service activities. Supporting Chatham Kemp’s work allows her to give back to her community.