William Weston Hammond

William Weston Hammond is a visual artist originally from California. He has moved slowly eastwards, spending 25 years in North Carolina and then, 6 years ago, moving to England. Although he has worked at many things: builder, landscape gardener, special needs art teacher and visiting artist in schools, he has always made artwork predominantly painting and sculpture/assemblage, but also at different points batik, book making and jewellery making.

It has been an interesting journey for me, coming to live in West Yorkshire after many years in the American South. My paintings have often been landscapes, some real, some imagined, but were always with vivid, sun-drenched colours, glowing. Here, the light is so different, the palette of colours totally different. In response I have had to find a new way to paint, a new way to see the beauty. It has taken a dog and many hours of walking on the moors in the rain, the snow and the sun to find it. I have begun to explore a new way of mixing colours – the colours are softer, yet sometimes there is still an intensity of light and of colour that draws me.

Many of my sculptures are what I call ‘Visual Haikus’. They represent to me the elements bound together, in balance -stone, metal and wood. My newest sculptures are from a series entitled ‘Artefacts for a Reconstructed Life’. Again, finding myself in a new place means learning new materials, surrounding myself with the discarded wonders of my new home and reshaping them into my story. You don’t find too many tobacco sticks here – the post-industrial North of England has offered up its own gems for me to unearth and re-interpret.

William Weston Hammond is this year’s winner of the Waterside Open 2012 Best in Show, Waterside Art Centre, 1 Waterside Plaza, Sale M33 7ZF. See Weston’s website.