Tom Hammick is a painter, printmaker and was Glyndebourne’s Associate Artist during the 2021 and 2022 festivals. He works from his studio in Bishopstone
Favourite person?
My children, Charlie, Cecilia and Elsie.
Favourite childhood painting memory?
Being taken by Kathy Lee, Laurie Lee’s wife, in her Morris Traveller to the National. Gallery and the Tate. We used to sit in front of paintings and talk about them, and I’m sure this is one of the things that turned me into a painter. I was in my early teens, and I absolutely loved it, especially The Battle of San Romano by Uccello. She was a gypsy, very beautiful and smothered me with kisses… HOW OLD WAS HE AND WHY WAS SHE TAKING HIM – HOW DID HE KNOW HER?
Favourite picture as a child?
My mum and dad bought a Julian Trevelyan painting. After he’d had a stroke, his paintings became very peculiar and it’s a painting of an apple picker in Kent. It#s very abstract and flat with a green sky, and I thought, wow, if he can paint a green sky, I can do anything.
Favourite artist?
Peter Doig.
Favourite exhibition experience?
Robert Loder who ran Triangle Arts in Africa came to an exhibition I had at the Brighton Museum and the opening was on a Sunday afternoon. It was a big space and I remember Robert coming up to me and saying that this is what art should be like: surrounded by people of all ages, having a really good time and being happy. It was rich and exotic with people from different backgrounds and different colours and lots of kids – just like a big wedding, really.
Favourite material to paint with?
Delicious oil paints. Going into a paint shop is like going into a sweetie store, and I’m obsessed by colours. It’s almost a form of synaesthesia, when you’re painting, you taste the colour and it conjures up a memory, and that’s very important to me. A simple one would be getting the right yellow, so you imagine in your mouth it tastes tart and citrusy.
Favourite subject to paint?
It’s a mixture of wonderment and melancholia. The pain of living in this Edenic world, which we are ****ing up lickerty spit, that’s my probably go-to subject. The other thing is home. That existential narrative about what home is. All those questions about home I paint a lot and it too is linked with a yearning and a pain of where we are and who we are and how do we live this short life.
Favourite painting of yours?
My favourite painting would be Living Air, a big oil painting that’s currently on show in America. The title is based on Darwin’s idea that everything is full of life whether it’s the air, the ground or the trees around us, and it’s a picture of me with rather a large bottom looking out to sea, surrounded by trees.
Favourite print of yours?
The one I’m doing now: Two Figures by the Sea, 2025. It has to be the favourite, otherwise I just look back into the past.
Favourite picture?
The Red Studio by Matisse.
Favourite place to walk?
South Downs.
Favourite thing about yourself?
Probably that I was a dad to three kids.
Favourite thing about your work/career?
That I can now seem to make enough money to keep painting and making prints.
Favourite saying?
Life’s too short.
Favourite smell?
I love the smell of filling up my car with gas, the smell of the sea on a windy day, hay that’s just been cut or cut grass, laundry out on the line, basil, and tarragon.
Favourite site in Sussex?
Looking out onto the field that’s next to my barn in Bishopstone.
Favourite building in Sussex?
The interior of the opera house at Glyndebourne. I love it because it’s like being in a ship. I also love Thomas à Becket church in Lewes. It’s got a real sense of history and weirdness and ancient people praying there for hundreds and hundreds of years.
Favourite drink?
Red wine. My dad died early and he had a lot of children and I inherited about an eighth of his cellar. In my twenties, when I was at university, we lived like kings for a year off my dad’s delicious Burgundy, and it gave me as a poor artist, a very dangerous taste for good Burgundy and claret.
Favourite thing about Sussex?
I love East Sussex especially. You’ve got the posh lot in West Sussex playing polo, and then you’ve got the Yeomans and Yeowomans of East Sussex where it’s the wield and slightly edgy. The people are from all different backgrounds but there’s a wonderful mix and it’s not inbred and posh like Norfolk or Suffolk, it’s arty and a lot of people work in London. It’s also not too up itself, it’s got an amazing landscape, and the sea. It’s fantastic.
Favourite decision you ever made?
I was a very unhappy young man, and I was in and out of the Maudsley and on lithium for a long time. Eventually I stopped trying to please my mum and dad and decided as a mature student in my mid-20s to go to art school and paint and do what I wanted to do and that changed my life. It was painting that saved me.
Favourite place at home?
My home is very hooghly (which means cosy in Danish) and my favourite place is probably sitting in my beautiful Danish armchair, reading a book.
Favourite way to relax?
Reading and listening to music.
Favourite thing you’ve ever bought or spent money on?
My bicycle.
Favourite time of day?
I love the magic hours, early morning or dusk.
Favourite season?
Spring or autumn – it changes.
Favourite colour?
Prussian blue.
Favourite animal?
Dog.
Favourite well-being tip?
Playing squash, swimming, going on a long walk and, of course, bicycling.
Favourite Sussex restaurant?
The Crown in Hastings.
Favourite film?
Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven.
Favourite piece of music?
The Well-Tempered Clavier played by Sviatoslav Richter, Onegin, Wagner’s Liebestod aria in Tristan and anything by Randy Newman, preferably Baltimore.
Favourite holiday destination?
Anywhere in Greece.
Favourite item of clothing?
My very nice Filson jacket.
Favourite place for Christmas lunch?
In a room with all my friends and family.
Favourite place for a Christmas walk?
On the Downs.
Favourite place to go Christmas shopping?
In a French market.
Favourite sight at Christmas?
I love looking at a homemade crib with Mary and Jesus, the kings, shepherds, sheep and a cow or a wonderful tree full of homemade decorations.
Favourite Christmas memory?
A frightening one. Mum used to wrap all the Christmas presents and put them in a cupboard and when I was five, I unwrapped all the presents and Mum woke up in the morning to her cupboard strewn with bubble bath all over the floor. I did it twice. God, I was in trouble. She then wrapped them all up rather fast and it meant that there was my granny getting a pair of socks and my grandfather getting a nightie.
Least favourite thing?
Tripe and flying.
What are your plans for November?
Preparing for my show with Huxley-Parlour in London in the new year.
