Patrick Earl Hammie
From the artist’s website at www.patrickearlhammie.com.
Patrick Earl Hammie’s paintings explore the tension between power and vulnerability as he re-imagines the modern male. Blending traditions of the Old Masters with contemporary modes of representation, Hammie’s portraits question and present visual alternatives to historical examples of masculinity. Adopting body language and narrative to reinvent and remix ideal beauty and heroic nudity, Hammie examines how male artists have historically represented themselves and the male nude. The traditional presentation of the male artist and nude as well as conventional ideas of the Black Macho live in the flesh of his models as they attempt to remove, purge and relocate the weight. Drawing from his life history as a son, a male and an African American struggling to synthesize past adversity, Hammie’s paintings symbolize his shadow-selves and visualize the effort to reconcile inner duality, transcend typical masculine ideals and yield to new realities that require constant compromise and change.
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