Nude Models and White Picket Fences
The next artist I wanted to introduce everyone to is my friend Bryan Hammond. A founding member of the Collective and an artist who’s journey is a story about the push and pull between conventional and experimental. Bryan can paint you a beautiful pasture scene in the style of an accomplished landscape artist, and then turn around and use that same technique to push the boundaries of figure drawing in the sense of texture, size, and concept. I’ve seen the man create a massive four panel painting influenced by the style of abstract expressionist Richard Dieborken, and I’ve watched him construct some manifestation of the darker side of the subconscious, in the form of a wooden hut inside my garage. I’ve seen snapshots from a night we barely remember, frozen in laughter on the canvas; and I’ve seen idyllic scenes from California’s golden coast. The common thread of this duality might be the most common thread throughout his path as an artist.
Having showed interest in fine art from the very beginning, Bryan found himself under the tutelage of a premier landscape artist as a young teen in rural California. Not only did this experience afford Bryan exposure to “professional” instruction at such an impressionable point of his life, he was also able to see first-hand the second part of being a working artist: showing and promoting your work. Howard Reese, Bryan’s private instructor, gifted Bryan the opportunity to be shown alongside artists with the functionality of working creators and the sophistication of seasoned makers. Now, where would a young man with a foundation of such mature complexion go next? But to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art of course.
Now here’s the part of Bryan’s story that I begin to relate to. Despite attending the oldest art school in the country and living for a year in one of the most interesting cities on the East Coast, Bryan felt as though his freshman year at art college was a failure: A stumble in self-awareness and identity as a young man and artist, coupled with a decline in productivity. Bryan found himself in sort of lost period in which my guy followed a love interest back to the West coast (haven’t we all?), only to find himself returning East to Charlotte, North Carolina of all places. Who am I? What am I doing? What the fuck is going on? We’ve all been there. Shit, you might have been there last week.
But up until this point Bryan had been working within the confines of traditional establishment: private instruction and prestigious academia. Now, things were about to get a little more interesting. Bryan enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and it was here that he would meet the afore-explored Joshua Blue. It was at this juncture that Bryan’s boundaries of concept in his work and bravery in his ambition would reach a place exploding with color and tenacity. Bryan’s instructors at this school were encouraging him to find his own voice, instead of cramming his identity into the tired old world he had been toiling in. His peers were live action characters chomping at the bit to grow, instead of men three times his senior, sizing up the Pacific Ocean from an upper-middle-class perspective. NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Hammond would not be the artist he is without the beginning he had. But he would not be the artist he’s become without challenging and expanding the expectation of himself with what he could achieve.
Next, Bryan established himself in the Charlotte art scene with a number of successful, self- produced shows, alongside his contemporary Joshua Blue. It was his first foray into making art and showing it of his own accord. A liberating moment for an artist who had at times struggled with believing in his own voice,
What happened after that may come as a shock to you: Bryan moved back to the West Coast. He’s settled in Portland, Oregon now and still exploring the world of abstract expressionism, landscape and memory; twisted veneers and augmented surfaces. This self-described “plane-jane” has had a journey through the traditional, all while searching for a way to let his inner freak flag fly. That struggle between perfectly fine artist and marauding conceptualist has created some beautiful stuff, and there aren’t many things I want to see more of.
Chase
