THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

Dressed in his characteristic black business suit, Richard Hambleton skulked like a fugitive, flitted like a wraith, and scampered like a rat across the burned-out eighties moonscape of the Lower East Side, in service both to his twisted artistic vision and to another, equally dark master.  Choosing the doorways of shooting galleries and the shells of abandoned tenements as his canvas, Hambleton laboured in the dead of night, slapping paint up quickly in the shifting glow of homeless trash fires.

Hamilton/Brooklyn, 2023

I’m not trying to make a specific statement with them.  They could represent watchmen or danger or the shadows of a human body after a nuclear holocaust, or even my own shadow. But what makes them exciting is the power of the viewer’s imagination. It’s that split-second experience when you see the figure that matters.

Richard Hambleton in Anon/Sabukaru