September Artist of the Month
Meet Nelson Hammer
Growing up on Long Island in the 1950s, one of the few elementary school-related assignments I remember was given to us at end of each school year: We had to draw a picture of a child running after a truck. The results were kept by the schools (no copiers then!) to measure the artistic progress of each student over the years. My teachers and friends always thought highly of my efforts, and it was one of my favorite assignments to do. I’ve enjoyed drawing for as long as I can remember, and still own many sketches I did as a teenager.
My parents bought me an oil-painting set when I was in college, and I took to it with relish. I also supplemented my parents’ allowance at school by doing charcoal portraits of my friends, with my best friend standing behind me to give me real-time critiques of my progress because I had a tendency to err on shapes and forms. I charged $2 a pop. Not much of a supplement.
I graduated with a BS in landscape architecture in 1969. Upon graduation, getting job, earning a living, getting married and having a family became roadblocks to my work in oils, especially because I painted so slowly. Despite my interest, I never took art classes during or after college. After my two children left home for school, I created a few more oils, but was becoming less interested in it due to the odors of turpentine and linseed oil…and the lack of ventilation.
During the summer of 2014, as I was strolling through a Michael’s crafts store with my wife and two eldest granddaughters, I spotted a starter watercolor kit and bought it on a whim. Now, what to paint? I digitally strolled through the web, keyed in beautiful, colored birds, and off I went. I had painted several birds when a friend advised me that I could liable for copyright infringement by creating derivative images of published material. I thought my bird painting was over!
Enter two relatives who were excellent amateur photographers: my daughter’s mother-in-law, Brenda Robert, and a first cousin, Mike Funk. They were eager to offer me an endless supply of subject matter, and a year or so after that, I received permission from several professional bird photographers to use their photos without fee. Crisis averted….until I filled out applications to join the Wellesley Society of Artists (WSA), and later, the New England Watercolor Society (NEWS). Both forbid the use of photos by others as source material. Gotta use my own photos!
Since bird photography is an art form of its own of which I had neither the skill nor the desire to learn, I turned to landscapes several years ago, which my landscape architectural background had helped foster. When my wife passed away in 2021 after living in Needham for 42 years, I moved in 2022 to an apartment in Wellesley Hills located across Route 9 from the Hemlock Gorge Reservation, home of Echo Bridge. If it is possible to fall in love with an inanimate object, I did just that, and have painted the bridge four times and counting.
However, the allure of painting birds and other fauna remained, yet I was resolute in wanting no part of investing in telephoto lenses and learning the nuances of DSLR and/or smartphone cameras. What to do? I know! Go to where birds and other fauna- having no fear of humans- casually interact with us without the need for a long lens! Off I went last December to the Galapagos Islands, had the time of my life, and took dozens of photographs of birds, sea lions, lizards, and giant turtles that have already been- and will in the future become additional- source material for my watercolors.
I was quick to realize that joining local associations would be very helpful me in both displaying my art and networking with other artists; I joined the Needham Art Association the same year I started painting. Since I was still as yet unable to wean myself from using others as photographic sources, I did not join NEWS until 2018 and was made a Signature Member in 2022. I also finally joined WSA soon after I moved to Wellesley Hills.
My painting style- realism with a focus on detail- dictates that I paint deliberately. I make no effort to hasten the completion of my pieces for a few reasons:
- Painting is my life! It’s the journey, not the destination for me; my least favorite task is signing my name to a finished piece.
- I am fortunate that I can support myself in retirement without the need sell my art. It remains a hobby. If I am able to sell a piece, all the better. I’m averaging about 1.3 sales a year. No financial reason to rush a piece.
- I now live in a two-bedroom unit in which the second bedroom is my studio. The bedroom and living room walls are filled with my work not to display my ego but because of a lack of space to store pieces. Other framed and unframed art are stacked, not hung, in my studio, in closets, and in one unusual case, in my guest bathtub. Painting slowly extends the length the time available before I run out of space.
Lastly but most importantly, art has been by my side and in my head when I needed it most during the past few years. Since I started painting in watercolors in 2014, orthopedic issues have taken tennis, then golf from me. But I can still paint! In the last three years, I lost my wife of 49 years, sold my house, moved to an apartment in another town, and retired the day I moved. A lotta stuff to absorb, and I couldn’t have gotten through it as readily as I did without my art… a blessing NOT in disguise!