Bill Hammond (artist)

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William (Bill) Hammond (born Christchurch, 1947) is a New Zealand artist.

Hammond attended the School of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury from 1966 to 1969, and has worked as a full-time painter since 1981 (in between times working as a toymaker). His large canvases feature two common themes - reference to popular music (often in the form of the liberal use of quoted lyrics within the structure of the paintings), and gaunt creatures with avian heads and human limbs. Hammond's canvases make liberal use of the flow of paint, with rivulets of colours running vertically down the backgrounds. These dark canvases, coupled with the anthropomorphic bird forms, have led to comparisons with the likes of Hieronymus Bosch.

His best known work is probably the 1993 painting "Waiting for Buller", which pays reference to the noted ornithologist Walter Lawry Buller.

[edit] External Links

• Bill Hammond: Jingle Jangle Morning - Christchurch Art Gallery’s exhibition of more than two decades of Hammond’s work. 20 July - 22 October 2007
• NZ Artists online gallery and biography
• Pictures of two paintings by Hammond a brief biography
• Sympathetic Magic - The Paintings of Bill Hammond, by Tessa Laird