Cat Stack 2006

Richard Hambleton made this ‘Cat Stack’ painting, with the title helpfully telling us what it is, and where it is. Hambleton’s loose, gestural style here is all about the immediate moment of art-making. Look at the splatters around the cat – they suggest movement, energy. The cat isn’t static; it’s alive, ready to pounce. The colours, simple and bold, create a graphic punch that’s very striking. The black silhouette against the coloured ground makes the cat pop. I'm struck by the stack the cat is perched on. It's rendered with quick, almost careless strokes, yet it holds the weight of the cat. The dynamic reminds me a little of Franz Kline, who was also interested in that immediacy and the power of black and white. But Hambleton’s got his own thing, a kind of streetwise poetry. It's not about perfection, but about feeling. And that’s something I always appreciate in art.