Windows

By Barry Hammond

Oil on canvas

20 cm x 20 cm x 4 cm

Price on request

Meaning and visual impact:

I live in Switzerland and we have many old buildings still in use that are several hundreds of years old. One of the unique features of these old buildings is they commonly have many, many windows. The windows tend to be small in size probably because the technology of the day did not allow for large panes of glass. Also many of the buildings simply had many rooms also so the facades tend to have multiple windows. Often the ground floor would be a commercial store and the upper levels would be apartments where people reside. This small abstract work is a depiction of a typical old Zürich building with a large paned window on the lower commercial level and the multiple windows on the upper floors that were typically living areas. I have tried to capture the interesting coloration that occurs as the older buildings often evolve to display patina, some random graffiti and the wear marks of hundreds of years of use.

Technical aspects:

A very small canvas size to compose a lot of detail. The technique was thick oil paint applied impasto style over a flat black background. Then the image was worked with artist knifes and brushes to achieve the final effect.