{"id":2250,"date":"2015-06-05T11:41:29","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T10:41:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodvale.com\/?p=2250"},"modified":"2015-06-05T11:41:29","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T10:41:29","slug":"wall-window-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wall-window-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall, Window, World"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katherine Locke<\/strong> talks to Tom Hammick<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\"Photographer:
Photographer: Antonio Parente<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As a teenager, Tom Hammick was discouraged from becoming an artist. \u2018Even though we were surrounded by art at home\u2019, he says. Both his parents collected Twentieth Century Modern British painters, such as Ben Nicholson and Julian Trevelyan and it was the latter\u2019s work that really struck a chord with Tom when he was young. \u2018It was a painting Trevelyan made in his later life, after he had a stroke\u2019, says Tom, \u2018It is a difficult painting that defies logic, as it had a solid green sky. As a child, it made perfect sense to me. It was around then that I started to understand how colour can convey emotion\u2019.
\nTom was taken to galleries regularly as a child. \u2018Cathy Lee (Laurie Lee\u2019s wife), was my God Mother and she would take me to The National Gallery every holiday. As would my Mum. I loved it\u2019. Despite this artistic environment, Tom\u2019s parents with his best interests at heart thought it would be \u2018crazy to be a painter\u2019, so he went to study Art History at Manchester University. \u2018It was a fabulous training in many ways\u2019, says Tom, \u2018I carry many paintings in my head and have a good grasp of the chronology of art\u2019. However, he was constantly drawing in lectures and his passion for making, as well as understanding, work did not diminish.<\/p>\n

\u2018A lot of artistic kids from my generation were sent on the grand tour to Florence or Venice to study paining\u2019, he says, \u2018I really didn\u2019t want to do that. It is great for being taught how to make lovely marks on paper, but it doesn\u2019t teach you how to look\u2019. Instead, after university, he took a very different direction and trained as a stonemason. \u2018I was fortunate enough to work for St Blaise and with the late Ian Constantinides, arguably one of the most innovative figures in British architectural conservation\u2019 he says. During this time, Tom lived in Powerstock with the painters David Kennard and Tom Rickman and remembers \u2018an acute feeling of wonderment at the landscape\u2019. He was painting then, but describes his work as \u2018appalling clunky pictures of people on the beach\u2019.
\n\u2018I wasn\u2019t very happy\u2019, he says, \u2018I was restless, and so decided to go to Camberwell to study fine art. This is when everything changed for me\u2019. He describes his time at Camberwell as \u2018heaven\u2014I felt as though I had found meaning in my life\u2019. He worked \u2018his socks off\u2019\u2014determined to make the most of every moment. \u2018I needed to learn a kind of truth in painting\u2019, he says, \u2018It was a rigorous training both intellectually and practically\u2019.
\nHowever, it was a difficult time to be a painter. \u2018In the late 1980\u2019s painting became unfashionable\u2019, says Tom, \u2018the YBA\u2019s (Young British Artists, such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst) were in the ascendency and figurative painters felt very out of step\u2019. It didn\u2019t deter Tom though, if anything it made him more determined to follow his own path.\u00a0 It is a tactic that has proved beneficial, as his quiet contemplative work has stood the test of time. He has shown all over the world and played a part in many major collections, including at The V&A, the British Museum and Bibliotheque National de France. He is also a skilled printmaker and says that both mediums hold equal importance for him in his practice, \u2018each process feeds the other\u2019, he says. He is fully accomplished in both disciplines and is unable to imagine working in one without the other.
\nNow based in East Sussex, Tom is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Painting and Printmaking at the University of Brighton. His work has attracted much critical acclaim and has been described by Julian Bell as having the \u2018negative virtue of unpretentiousness\u2019 with his delight in his materials all apparent. The work is often narrative\u2014a glimpse into a strange world as different as it is recognisable. He has been compared to Matisse and Bonnard in his use of block colour and pattern.
\nHis latest collaboration is a book with Julian Bell, entitled Wall, Window, World. It is the result of many years conversation the pair have enjoyed about art and the process of painting. \u2018I first met Julian in the local pub\u2019, recalls Tom. \u2018I was squatting in a studio near Lewes, when I walked into the local and saw a man reading a book by Peter Schjeldahl. I arrogantly didn\u2019t think anyone else had heard of Schjeldahl (a leading art critic for the New Yorker and the Village Voice), so I marched straight up and said \u201cI\u2019ve got that book\u201d, it was the beginning of a long friendship\u2019. Tom describes Bell as \u2018having an amazing brainbox\u2019.
\nJulian Bell is a respected painter in his own right and writes extensively about art. He is the grandson of Vanessa Bell. Wall, Window, World explores contemporary debates around painting using Tom\u2019s work as the context. There are over 120 colour images in this beautifully presented book. Bell\u2019s writing perfectly complements Tom\u2019s work in its quite assertiveness\u2014confidence without a trace of brashness. A surety of subject that is compelling. The book includes a chapter on paint and print that fully describes Tom\u2019s relationship with both.
\nTom\u2019s work is often inspired by the landscape in which he lives. Mostly South East England, but also Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in Canada, where he has spent time working, both as a painter and as a lecturer. The work is also informed by his family. \u2018Art is a lonely business\u2019, he says, \u2018my wife and three children feature frequently. The importance of family and place are reoccurring themes\u2019.
\nThe book argues that Tom\u2019s work \u2018constitutes one of the richest imaginative achievements in late 20th and early 21st century British art\u2019. Tom has realised a rich body of work that is fully explored by Julian Bell. It is a book that will appeal to students, collectors or anyone interested in the practice of painting.
\nTom describes how as an artist one tries to be a barometer on the world. \u2018Essentially\u2019, he says \u2018the human condition is about love and loss, where and how we live, and the state we are in\u2019.<\/p>\n

20 June \u2013 25 July<\/em>\u00a0 Tom Hammick \u2018The Trajectory of a Romantic\u2019 Opening of his exhibition tour, coinciding with the release of a new monograph of the artist\u2019s paintings featuring text from Julian Bell. Allsop Gallery, Bridport Arts Centre. 01308 424204. www.bridport-arts.com. <\/em>
\nTom Hammick will also be exhibiting at Sladers Yard in Autumn 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n

Wall, Window, World <\/em>
\nwill available on 28.06.2015<\/em>
\nPublished by Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd ISBN: 9781848221659<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katherine Locke talks to Tom Hammick                         As a teenager, Tom Hammick was discouraged from becoming an artist. \u2018Even though we were surrounded by art at home\u2019, he says. Both his parents collected Twentieth Century Modern British painters, such as Ben Nicholson and Julian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,8],"tags":[68],"class_list":["post-2250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-articles","category-arts","tag-katherine-locke"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}