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Where Was I? – Hammond At Zanesville

July 1, 2022
an abstract painting - Where Was I?

Where Was I?

We are excited to announce that Hammond’s Where Was I? (which is currently available for sale at our gallery) was accepted into the online Ohio Annual exhibition hosted by the Zanesville Museum of Art, Zanesville, OH. In its 76th year, this competitive, juried exhibition welcomed submissions from all Ohio artists in all stages of their careers. Seventy-eight artists were chosen from more than four hundred who submitted works, each vying for the opportunity to exhibit their work at the museum.

Where Was I?  is a bridge, transporting the artist from a set of emotional works that came before, to his more bold/colorful pieces. According to Hammond:  There are times when a mood you wish to express or an event that you wish to capture the essence of just can not be expressed in color. Its almost as if the beauty and joy of something so colorful would be a disservice to something so serious.

Long known for my bright, bold, contrasting and often outrageous use of color, in 2018 I began painting Five Forward and Five Backward. These two sister paintings were about the passing of my mother. Gone were the bright, bold colors in exchange for black, white and shades of gray to reflect the hardship I was forced to face. They were serious paintings about a life changing event that I as the artist, felt no joy in creating. In retrospect I think the experience of working on those two canvases took a larger toll on me than I thought they would.

When I finished the two works a year later, I prepared to move on. For some reason though, I felt I couldn’t just dive back into colorful work and I needed a painting that could point me in the right direction to where I was before. I needed something to bridge back to where I normally create.

Enter: Where Was I?

Where was I? had been painted with the intention of being that bridge. Coming back from work that was so serious, color could not be a distraction, to a world filled with color grabbing your attention at every corner. This was a painting that would take from both worlds in order to mount a smooth transition to where I just was to where I wanted abstract to be.

If you build a bridge, make sure it leads to somewhere!

Immediately following Where Was I?, Blue Pair was painted. The ability to grab your attention with bold and exciting color, while still telling a story, has now returned.

The exhibition opened on June 23rd and will run through September 9, 2022. You can view all the exhibited works here: 76th Ohio Annual Exhibition-ONLINE .

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