The state park service encouraged middle class and working families to camp there for extended periods, "roughing it pleasantly" for their spiritual and physical refreshment.

The family slept on straw mattress cots under a canvas shelter and made several trips a day down to the local spring for fresh water, and yet, they cooked their meals on a modern oil stove, wired electric power in from Bloede's Dam, and brought their piano to the campsite to enjoy music played in their "living room" tent.

By carving out a place to live in the wilderness, Hamilton asserted that she was able to develop self-confidence and a sense of adventure, and she "learned to be creative and inventive.

In the meantime, O'Neal continued to maintain the home at the Old Mill, which meandered alongside the edge of Shades Creek in Mountain Brook.

Hamilton enjoy her trips back to Mountain Brook, where she would gracefully act as hostess, entertaining some of the most prominent scientists in early aerospace engineering.

[10] In 1945, Hamilton graduated from Maryland Institute (now MICA) and went on to study for two years with Robert Brackman in New York as a member of the Art Students League.

She was not interested in Picasso, she says, and while she admired the work of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, she mainly wanted to learn the techniques required for outdoor murals.

By extension, it is also the name of a massive mountain system that includes the Karakoram, the Hindu Kush, and smaller ranges that extend out from the Pamir Knot.

Together, the Himalayan mountain system is home to the world's highest peaks, which include Mount Everest and K2, which is part of the Karakoram Range.

Legend has it that the Buddhist saint Guru Rinpoche visited Sikkim in the 9th century, introduced Buddhism and foretold the era of the monarchy.

Of her expeditions over the years to K2 and Everest, she writes, "I often return to the 'Abode of the Snows' for it seems there my thoughts crystallize into forms that find their way into the movements, rhythms, pulsating in and out of my canvases.

"[12] During these years, Hamilton was exposed to and influenced by early Sienese and later Renaissance painting, especially Giotto's use of space that inspired her move toward abstraction.

In the late 1940s to early 1950s, the influence of Diego Rivera is evident in the earthy textures and colors, as well as in the heavy, sculpted, quasi-cubist forms of her increasingly abstract paintings (see right).

A painting from Mexico, which she says is the dead child of her maid, is a shadowy face, surrounded by leaves and swirls in deep shades of crimson.

"In 1960, Ismail Gulgee, known for his portraiture, began experimenting with non-objective painting (in the manner of Jackson Pollock) after working with visiting American artist, Elaine Hamilton.

"[17] While Hamilton was living in France, she gained the professional admiration and support of Michel Tapié de Céleyran, who was a highly influential French critic and respected painter.

In late 1960, full of inspiration after her most recent Himalayan adventure, upon her return to France, she quickly created many more of these huge "action" canvases in preparation for solo and group exhibitions in Japan.

The exhibit took place from April 12–18, 1961 and was presented in collaboration with the Gutai Group, which was an association of avant-garde artists representative of Japan's post-war art world.

Clearly part of the movement known as 'lyrical gestural abstraction', her painting is full of verve and invention and manifests an extraordinary gift for colour and substance.

"[24] Touring her home in 2009, Martha Thomas, writer with the Baltimore Magazine, was able to view Hamilton's many works within the artist's private collection.

Other pieces remain in public and private collections in Austria, France, Germany, India, Italy, Mexico, Pakistan, Switzerland and the United States.

Hamilton lived in apartments in Florence and New York, in a tent at the Mount Everest base camp, and when she was in Mexico City, she was housed by the Rotary Club of Houston, Texas.

After returning to America, Hamilton and her husband lived together in an historic, converted grist mill in Mountain Brook, southwest of Birmingham, Alabama.

It was expansive with noble proportions and high, stepped tray ceilings that she designed herself in the wide, one-story "Chartreuse" style, common in southern France.

The Regency fireplace mantel—heavy marble carved in scrolls, which Hamilton shipped from France—displayed a bronze cat by the sculptor Antoine-Louis Barye, antique toys from India, and a pair of cloisonné vases (exported from Tibet on the back of a yak).

Her dining room furniture dates to the Renaissance, the table embellished with a pair of sturdy brass candlesticks from the same period, which she bought for $200 as an art student in Florence.

In addition to rugs, skins from leopards and tigers—with heads intact—are draped over seats along the wall and low tables in Hamilton's meditation room, a sanctuary off the library.

The walls are painted according to tradition: the deep earth red around the base, moving through horizontal bands of orange and gold representing various stages of clarity, and finally a blue ceiling, signifying nirvana.

Perhaps suspecting a visitor's disbelief—or in most cases, awe—she flutters her hands toward the library or her bedroom and says, "Oh, I have photos of all that," promising to provide proof that her wondrous tales really happened.

In the gallery, which she had constructed with high ceilings and recessed lighting to showcase her large canvases, Hamilton sifts through scrapbooks and locates a spread from the May 13, 1951, edition of The Baltimore Sun Magazine, its edges yellowed and brittle.