Artwork of Christian Hammer

Gatt and Magpie – Comic

Gatt assumes his familiar role as interpreter of life’s infinite complexities. His tiny paws gesture with scholarly enthusiasm, each movement a testimony to the urgent importance of whatever revelation currently occupies his bustling mind. The magpie, eternal student of glittering truths, cocks its head in that particular way that suggests either profound comprehension or magnificent confusion—the difference often indistinguishable in moments of shared discovery.

Their friendship, renewed now after decades of dormancy, carries within it echoes of their earlier incarnations. Yet here they stand, transformed by time’s patient refinement, their forms cleaner, their essences distilled to something approaching platonic ideals of themselves. The passage of thirty years has stripped away the unnecessary, leaving behind characters who wear their simplified lines like well-earned wisdom.

There’s something profound in revisiting these old friends, in finding them not just preserved but evolved. Like memories that sharpen rather than fade with time, Gatt and his magpie companion have emerged from their long hibernation with renewed purpose. Their “Cold Coffee” origins remain visible in subtle ways—a certain tilt of Gatt’s head, a particular angle of the magpie’s wing—but now they exist in a world where their conversations carry the weight of both nostalgia and reinvention.

The scene captures that eternal moment of earnest sharing—when understanding hovers just beyond reach, when explanation becomes both bridge and barrier. Gatt’s animated presence contrasts beautifully with the magpie’s measured observation, creating a visual dialogue about the nature of knowledge itself: how we receive it, how we share it, how we transform it through the act of transmission.

In their modernized forms, these characters become avatars of continuity amid change—how essential truths persist even as their vessels evolve, how friendship transcends not just species but time itself. Their return speaks to the way certain creative bonds refuse to be abandoned, patiently waiting in the margins of memory for the moment when they might again step into the light, carrying with them both the weight of their history and the lightness of their renewal.

Ippy – Slings and Arrows

Here, caught in eternal preparation for battle against the forces of failed connections and broken links, our diminutive warrior assumes a stance that speaks to something deeper than mere server errors. His wooden shield, raised against the rain of stones and arrows, becomes both practical defense and symbolic gesture—a testament to resilience in the face of technological tempests.

There’s profound charm in the way his teeth grit with cartoonish determination, transforming what could be moments of user frustration into opportunities for shared humor. His reaching hand, forever frozen in that moment between peace and action, suggests not just preparation for combat but a readiness to embrace whatever chaos the digital realm might manifest.

The 404 page—that universal signal of paths diverged and connections lost—would have found in Ippy a perfect ambassador. His presence offers a gentle reminder that even in the spaces between intended destinations, beauty and humor can flourish. Each stone and arrow that rains down upon his position becomes less harbinger of disaster and more celebration of the unexpected detours that often lead to our most memorable discoveries.

Though the startup’s dreams may have dissolved into the vast ocean of might-have-beens, Ippy remains—a small but potent reminder of how creativity often finds its truest expression in those moments when we dare to meet technical frustration with playful defiance. His one-eyed vigilance continues to stand guard over that threshold where error messages transform into opportunities for unexpected delight.

In this frozen moment of perpetual preparation, sword just out of reach and shield braced for impact, Ippy embodies that eternal optimism that sees in every broken link not an ending, but merely another beginning—another chance to transform digital disappointment into shared moments of whimsical recognition.

Wood Burn design inspired byCeltic, PNW coastal and Pacific islander traditions

Twin Tiki – Reclaimed Cedar with Wood Burning

In the sacred confluence of heritage and heartwood, where ancestral voices find new resonance through flame’s testimony, “Twin Tiki” emerges as both bridge and beacon. Here, upon reclaimed cedar’s patient canvas—each ring a chapter in the Pacific Northwest’s endless chronicle—three cultural rivers converge in a dance of perpetual becoming.

The burning tool becomes more than mere instrument; it transforms into a translator of ancient tongues, each stroke a syllable in a language that speaks across centuries. Pacific Islander motifs flow into the fluid narratives of Coastal Native design with the same inevitability as tides meeting shoreline, their shared reverence for ocean’s wisdom creating harmonies that transcend geographical boundaries.

Celtic knots, those eternal witnesses to interconnection’s profound truth, weave themselves through this dialogue with the graceful insistence of memories refusing to fade. Their intricate patterns speak to the way all traditions, when honored with sufficient depth, reveal themselves as tributaries of the same vast river of human expression.

The cedar itself participates in this convergence, its grain lines offering their own ancient calligraphy to the composition. Each whorl and wave in the wood’s surface becomes a note in this visual symphony, a reminder that nature herself has always been the first artist, the first storyteller, the first keeper of sacred geometries.

Through fire’s transformative touch, these distinct cultural voices find common ground in the language of symbol and shadow. Tiki forms acquire the fluid movement of salmon in Northwest Native art, while Celtic spirals echo the waves that have carried countless voyagers across vast oceanic expanses. Here, in this marriage of traditions, we find testimony to the way human creativity transcends the artificial boundaries of time and territory.

The reclaimed wood itself becomes metaphor—how materials, like traditions, can be renewed without losing their essential character, how the past never truly fades but rather transforms itself into foundation for future expressions. Each burn mark writes its story not just upon the surface but deep into the wood’s memory, creating permanent testimony to the way cultures, like rivers, inevitably find their way to each other’s shores.

In this sacred space between intention and emergence, “Twin Tiki” stands as witness to the eternal truth that all traditions spring from the same well of human yearning—to make meaning, to leave marks, to speak across generations in languages both ancient and eternally new.

Wood Burn design of an abstract squid on cedar

Squidly – Wood Burning on cedar panel

In the ancient dialogue between fire and fiber, where cedar’s patient rings whisper tales of seasons long past, “Squidly” emerges as both invocation and revelation. Here, in this communion of element and essence, heat becomes storyteller, transforming surface into sanctuary, marking time’s passage in deliberate strokes that honor both intention and material memory.

The cedar panel, itself a testament to cycles of reclamation and rebirth, offers its own narrative to this collaboration. Each growth ring becomes a line of living text, a chronicle of drought and abundance, of winters weathered and springs embraced. Against this organic manuscript, the burning tool traces new stories—its heat singing hymns of transformation as it translates fluid motion into permanent testimony.

Squidly’s form, caught between definition and suggestion, emerges through this careful choreography of char and grain. Tentacles reach across time’s texture like questions seeking ancient answers, each curve and spiral a meditation on the nature of movement itself. The wood’s natural patterns participate in this dance of becoming, grain lines flowing like currents that guided this creature’s ancestors through primordial seas.

In this marriage of technique and material, every burn mark becomes an act of reverence—a recognition that creation often dwells in the space between control and surrender. The heat’s passage leaves behind more than mere marks; it creates topography of touch and restraint, where darkness blooms like ink in water, spreading until it finds its natural boundaries in the wood’s willing embrace.

Through this process, what begins as simple design transcends into exploration of how form emerges from formlessness, how intention meets resistance and creates something greater than either could achieve alone. The squid, that philosopher of ocean depths, finds new expression in this medium of permanent flame, its essence captured not in literal translation but in the way it suggests movement even in stillness, presence even in absence.

Here, in this communion of fire and fiber, art becomes artifact becomes allegory—speaking to the way all things carry within them the potential for transformation, waiting only for the right touch, the right moment, the right convergence of elements to reveal their hidden truths.

Shadow and Fruit – Acrylic on Canvas

Shadow assumes her role as witness to life’s quiet entropy. The painting, from 2001, captures that eternal moment where feline curiosity intersects with the mundane poetry of decomposition—a still life that refuses to remain still.

Her silhouette, rendered in that liminal space between presence and absence, speaks to the dual nature of her kind: both here and elsewhere, anchored in physical form yet somehow transcending it. The subtle red glow that haunts her edges suggests an inner warmth that defies the void-like plane surrounding her, as if her very being generates its own atmosphere of contemplation.

The ceramic bowl, that humble altar to domestic ritual, cradles its offerings with stoic grace. The orange rests in perfect wholeness, a temporary sun in this private cosmos, while beside it the bananas surrender to time’s patient insistence. Their slow decay becomes a testament to the way all things move through states of being—from utility to beauty to something approaching transcendence in their final surrender.

Shadow’s cocked head captures that quintessential feline gesture of focused ambivalence, where interest and indifference dance their eternal duet. In this gesture lies the heart of the painting’s philosophical inquiry: how do we measure the worth of things in their various states of becoming and unbecoming? Through her eyes, the fruit becomes more than mere sustenance or decay—it becomes a puzzle of existence itself, worthy of profound consideration.

The textured plane, almost void-like in its subtle suggestion of infinite space, transforms this simple domestic scene into something approaching cosmic significance. Here, in this space between defined and undefined, a cat contemplates the nature of transformation while time itself holds its breath, waiting to see what wisdom might emerge from this convergence of observer and observed.

Twenty-four years later, the painting itself has become a meditation on preservation—how moments caught in pigment resist time’s flow even as they document its passage. Shadow’s eternal contemplation continues, unaware that her painted form would outlast her physical one, becoming a testament to the way art transforms even our most intimate domestic moments into monuments of remembrance.

Red plastic bottle adrift in a sunset colored seascape

Adrift and Alone – Oil Painting

In the cruel poetry of human consequence, beauty and devastation dance an uneasy waltz across the the canvas’s intimate terrain. Here, where sunset bleeds its chromatic confession into waiting waters, a single red bottle drifts in elegant abandonment—an exile in a wilderness we have unknowingly crafted from our own discarded dreams.

The bottle, that ambassador of our disposable age, catches evening light with the same innocent grace as any natural wonder. Its synthetic skin transforms beneath the sun’s dying rays, becoming something approaching sublime even as it bears witness to our collective shortsightedness. Reds and purples paint its form in hues borrowed from nature’s most transcendent moments, as if the very sky conspires to highlight the strange beauty we have cast adrift in our wake.

There’s a profound loneliness in this singular focus—how isolation transforms even our refuse into subjects worthy of contemplation. The bottle floats in space between intention and abandonment, between utility and eternal persistence. Each ripple of light across its surface tells a story of transformation: how something created for moments of convenience has become an unwilling monument to permanence.

In rendering this castaway in sunset’s most seductive palette, the painting speaks to deeper truths about beauty’s complicated relationship with consequence. The same colors that draw us into contemplation of natural wonder here serve to illuminate our impact—how even our mistakes can catch light like prayers, how destruction often wears the face of momentary grace.

The title “Adrift” carries its own weight of meaning, speaking not just to the physical state of this wandering artifact, but to our own uncertain navigation of responsibility and consequence. In this single frame, captured on wood that once lived and breathed, we confront the strange marriage of intention and impact—how our brief conveniences birth eternal companions for Earth’s ancient oceans.

This piece becomes both celebration and indictment, a meditation on the way human presence transforms even the most pristine wilderness into a gallery of unintended installations. The bottle, lonely prophet of consumer convenience, floats eternal in its sunset reverie, beautiful and damned, a singular voice in the vast chorus of our collective impact.

2 Koi swim in a pool with reflections as smoke on the water

Koi Duo – Oil Painting

Water’s surface becomes canvas for cosmic dreams, two koi navigate the boundaries between earthly and celestial realms. Their fluid forms, rendered in oils that capture both motion and meditation, trace elegant arcs through waters that mirror the swirling storms of a distant giant.

Here, the familiar dance of ornamental carp transcends its terrestrial origins. Each ripple in their wake becomes a disturbance in the fabricated cosmos above—their movement below creating new patterns in the Jovian tableau that crowns their aqueous domain. The surface tension holds these two realities in delicate suspension, neither fully water nor fully sky, but something more profound: a membrane between known and unknown, between the tangible poetry of fish-flesh and the distant dreams of gas giants.

The smokey ephemera of Jupiter’s borrowed storms find perfect echo in the water’s constantly shifting surface. Each wave catches light and shadow in ways that speak to the eternal dance of chaos and order—how turbulence creates pattern, how disturbance gives birth to beauty. The koi, in their eternal circling, become both creators and observers of this miniature universe, their golden and pearl scales catching fragments of light that could be stars or could be merely afternoon sun transformed by imagination and pigment.

There’s something profound in this convergence of scales—how the massive atmospheric bands of a distant planet find their echo in the subtle play of light across disturbed water, how beings as earthbound as fish can swim through what appears to be deep space. Through careful attention to the way light bends and breaks across the water’s surface, the painting captures that eternal moment where the ordinary transcends itself, where a garden pond becomes an observatory for cosmic wonder.

In this suspended moment, the boundaries between above and below, between near and far, between real and imagined, dissolve into something approaching truth. The koi continue their eternal dance, unaware perhaps that their simple movements create and destroy universe after universe in the reflective cosmos above—each ripple a new storm system, each turn a reorganization of celestial forces.

Here, in this marriage of earthly and celestial waters, we find a meditation on perspective itself—how the grandest cosmic designs might be mirrored in the smallest disturbances of our daily world, how we might find infinity in a garden pond if only we learn to see with sufficient wonder.

A crab climbs a shelves full of reflective glass bottles in bright sunlight

Crab Climbing Bottles

Between sea and shore, where tides write their stories in the language of ebb and flow, I found myself drawn to explore a different kind of migration. Here, rendered in oil pastel’s unforgiving honesty, a crab ventures beyond its ancestral territory into a landscape of human detritus transformed by intention into something approaching sacred geometry.

The shelves, laden with glass bottles, become both obstacle and opportunity—each vessel a prism catching and fracturing sunlight into countless possibilities. The crab, creature of twilight zones and tidal margins, navigates this crystalline forest with the deliberate grace of an explorer charting unknown territories. Its claws, evolved for the crush and scuttle of intertidal life, here become tools of delicate negotiation with these fragile sentinels of human presence.

There’s something profound in this juxtaposition—how the hard-shelled pragmatism of the crab’s form creates unexpected dialogue with the ethereal nature of light-filled glass. Each bottle becomes its own small universe, holding not just space but captured light, transformed and multiplied until the ordinary shelving unit becomes an altar to possibility.

Working in oil pastel allowed me to explore the way light fractures and reforms, how it pools in the curves of glass and slides across the crab’s carapace like liquid possibility. The medium’s resistance to perfect blending mirrors the slight awkwardness of the crab in this manufactured environment—each mark a testament to the beautiful imperfection of crossing boundaries.

This piece joins its siblings in my ongoing exploration of these unlikely encounters—each drawing a meditation on adaptation, on finding grace in spaces we were never meant to inhabit. Through this series, these crustacean wanderers become avatars for all of us who have ever found ourselves navigating unfamiliar terrain, finding beauty in the very alienation that defines our journey.

In the end, perhaps that’s what draws me back to these scenarios—how they speak to the eternal dance between belonging and displacement, between the wild and the curated, between what we inherit and what we dare to explore. Each crab, each bottle, each play of light becomes part of a larger story about finding wonder in the spaces between our expected territories.

Horse, 2 dogs and a crow interact at teh fencline

Victor, Riley, Rabbit and Crow

Standing before my studio panel, I find myself drawn into the story unfolding in pigment and possibility—a tale that emerged not from planned composition but from the daily poetry of our small farm. Here, where the boundaries between domestic and wild blur into something more nuanced, I’ve captured a moment that speaks to the unexpected harmonies that grace our lives when we pause long enough to witness them.

Victor, our gentle giant, has always carried himself with a dignity that transcends his role as mere farm resident. In this piece, I wanted to capture the way he drops that mantle of equine majesty into something more intimate when his crow friend arrives. Their connection, painted in the subtle angle of his neck and the direct gaze between species, reveals something profound about the nature of friendship—how it finds its way through the most unlikely channels when we leave space for wonder.

Riley and Rabbit, our cattle dogs, bring their own complexity to this narrative. I found myself smiling as I laid down their forms at the fence line, recognizing in their postures that familiar tension between their bred imperative to control and their genuine puzzlement at this disruption of their understood order. Their presence grounds the piece in the daily reality of farm life while simultaneously highlighting how extraordinary this moment truly is.

The crow—this elegant ambassador between wild and domesticated realms—emerged on the panel as more than mere wildlife. Through careful attention to the interplay of light and shadow, I sought to capture that spark of intelligence that first drew it into conversation with Victor. There’s something profound in their shared gaze, something that speaks to the possibility of connection across all manner of perceived boundaries.

Working on this larger scale allowed me to explore these relationships with the depth they deserve. The 30″x40″ panel became a window into a moment where the usual hierarchies of farm life dissolve into something more profound—a testament to the daily miracles that unfold when we allow ourselves to witness them with open hearts and careful eyes.

In many ways, this piece feels less like a painting I created and more like a story I was privileged to witness and record—a moment where the extraordinary revealed itself in the seemingly ordinary rhythm of another day on our farm.

2 prancing ponies in the wind and waves engraved tile

Prancing Ponies – Engraved Tile

In the delicate dance between artisan and element, where clay surrenders to intention and glaze transforms to permanent memory, two equine spirits emerge from the fired canvas of possibility. These prancing ponies, caught in eternal revelry, speak to the untamed heart of the Pacific Northwest—a place where the boundary between earth and sky dissolves in perpetual negotiation.

Their forms, etched with deliberate grace into the ceramic’s willing surface, capture that liminal moment between motion and stillness, where hooves seem to barely kiss the ground before lifting again into dream. The wind that carries them—rendered in sweeping lines that echo the region’s eternal atmospheric dance—becomes both medium and message, speaking of those endless conversations between storm and shore that define this corner of the world.

Here, in this fired testimony to joy’s ephemeral nature, the waves that frame these spirited creatures carry the same restless energy that eternally shapes our coastline. They curl and surge across the tile’s terrain like memories of every storm that has ever graced our shores, each line a testament to the way water writes its story upon the world—sometimes in whispers, sometimes in thunderous declarations.

The ponies themselves emerge as more than mere figures; they become avatars of that wild spirit that still runs untamed through our regional consciousness. Their manes, caught in mid-flight, mirror the way cedar boughs dance in winter gales, while their fluid forms speak to that essential freedom that resides in all things untamed and true to their nature.

In this single frame of fired clay, I’ve tried to capture something of the soul of this place—where elements conspire in endless play, where boundaries between real and mythic blur like shoreline in fog, and where every creature, whether rendered in clay or flesh, dances to rhythms as ancient as the tides themselves.