His work has been commissioned by collectors across the country, kept company with works of Max Ernst and Alexander Calder, and been displayed in galleries in New York, New England and beyond.
“It was a long time before I actually thought of myself as an artist, so I guess I’m a late bloomer,” Hammer said, with a laugh that comes easily and often.
He was looking for a room to paint in when he stumbled upon the three story row house in the heart of the landmarked district of Hunters Point, where he has lived and worked for the last 26 years.
He has driven a taxi, made and sold chess sets, sold other people’s work in a Manhattan gallery and done odd jobs over the years to make ends meet. He gave it all up for good only four years ago, and now makes his living solely from his paintings.
His advice to young artists is born of this personal experience: Don’t think you can never do it, and don’t give up. “You find that you keep at it and you keep honing your craft. It’s wonderful to be inspired and to be gifted, but you have to have a craft,” he said.
Never academically trained in painting, Hammer believes in art for art’s sake. He defies the romantic vision of the tortured artist and admits—despite fears he’ll sound old and out of touch—a distaste for the kind of postmodern “cutting edge” art he sees in some Chelsea galleries these days.
He simply gets up every day, walks his dog, and goes upstairs to his third floor studio to paint. “It’s a struggle. Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn’t. But I no longer have doubts about who I am and what I’m doing,” he said.
The first floor of the house serves as living space and for storage of a collection of unique frames Hammer gleefully says he is a little bit “mad about.”
The high ceilinged second floor serves as testament to a life lived in appreciation of beautiful things—a collection of art deco lamps and African masks are among the artifacts there—and as a gallery of his own work. “I paint for my own pleasure, so why shouldn’t I have them around me to look at?” he said of the paintings that crowd every available inch of wall space.
Portraits of friends and other artists, cityscapes and landscapes, and still lifes in myriad mood and tone exemplify the many styles Hammer points to as influences. Marsden Hartley and the German Expressionists make that list. Other paintings are more evocative of Henri Matisse and the other painters he says he absorbed, like a sponge, in his early years.
Hammer’s latest solo show, on display at Long Island City’s Art O Mat, hits closer to home. It’s largely a showcase of the earthy yet ethereal landscapes of his daily life. It includes recognizable buildings and vistas of Long Island City and part of a series of still lifes portraying the brushes, palettes and other tools of his trade.
Hammer jokes he is too lazy to travel much, but he finds sufficient material, and comfort, in the city just outside his door.
“Long Island City, having not changed dramatically in all these years, provides inspiration that is familiar to me,” he said. While galleries and artists’ studios continue to crop up, and the neighborhood seems perpetually poised to burst full force into the art scene, it remains heavily populated with warehouses and industrial sites.
“There is a lot of ugliness around here,” Hammer said. “As an artist, I am interested in beauty, so I try to take what’s around me and make it beautiful in my own particular way.”
He makes the crucial distinction between the pretty—which is at best transitory—and the beautiful, which carries a permanence, and a resonance.
“Birch Trees” and “The Firehouse,” paintings now on display in the show, are evidence that Hammer’s keen powers of observation, natural curiosity and brushstrokes do succeed at transforming the mundane around him into the magical.
Hammer’s show, “Restless Nature,” will be on display at Art O Mat, 46 46 Vernon Blvd. in Long Island City, through May 7.
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