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the Columbus College of Art and Design. It was his introduction to Ohio that initially goaded him toward landscapes – thanks to the changing seasons and variety of different settings, Ohio’s landscapes are very different from Florida’s, he says.

“It was so fresh and new that I just gravitated to the way the world looked around me,” says Hamilton.

Hamilton also met Amy, his future wife, at CCAD. She has her own barn on the Granville property, which she uses for her hatmaking business, Granville Millinery Co.

In Hamilton’s landscapes, which he describes as American realism style, it is important to him that each painting tells a story.

“Anytime you see a landscape painting, there’s a story to be told there,” Hamilton says.

Finding landscapes to paint comes naturally to Hamilton, who has always had an affinity for exploration. Frequently, he will

Left: Making Magic

Above: A Sister’s Spirit Within Him

Below: Thunderroad 1967 develop an idea for a story to tell, and then seek out a setting that will allow him to tell it. For example, on a recent drive through the Granville area, he spotted an old car for sale in front of a 1970s-era house and saw a perfect opportunity for a painting, which he has titled Positively 21st Street in reference to Bob Dylan’s 1965 song Positively 4th Street.

“That’s like a Bob Dylan song,” he says. “There’s a story there.”

It’s tougher to tell a story with some other forms of artistic expression, Hamilton says, but he manages. A 15-foot-long wood frame sculpture of a humpback whale – certainly a departure from the type of work Hamilton is known for – is a callback to his abiding interest in whales as a child. He loved to draw and learn about whales, he says, and even bought the records of whale songs that were sold in the 1970s to listen to in his room.

Hamilton’s collection also includes a full-size birdhouse, a wall of 60 small bird paintings, a portrait of his daughter, an assemblage utilizing croquet balls and a bowling pin, and combine pieces symbolizing Hamilton’s past and present that feature lights and objects boxed up in Plexiglass. Hamilton refers to the latter sculptures as examples of what he might have made right after college if he had the resources and skill he has today.

But perhaps the piece most indicative of Hamilton’s life is a framed painting inspired by a statue he saw in a Pitts- burgh cemetery: an angelic woman wielding a trident, with the word GUARDIAN at the bottom. That painting reflects Hamilton’s belief in a guardian watching over his own life – one that helped him survive spinal meningitis at age 5, a neardrowning experience at age 13 and going through a windshield after being hit by a car at age 15.

They may be wildly different in appearance, but each piece in Metaphors and

Modernism is part of a theme: Hamilton’s development as an artist. The show runs through Nov. 27.

In addition to Hammond Harkins, Hamilton also has works on display at the Ohio Supreme Court building, the Governor’s Mansion and Denison University. cs

Garth Bishop is editor of CityScene Magazine. Feedback welcome at gbishop@pubgroupltd.com.