Building on the artist’s series of Chenilles (2016–present), Harmony Hammond’s Cross Paintings (2019–present) are punctuated with protrusions, holes, seams and fraying edges, foregrounding notions of suture and concealment—of hidden layers, spaces, or narratives that lie beneath the surface. Contending that the “body is always near,” Hammond uses the materials in these works to elicit notions of the canvas as a metaphorical body. As a place where surface and skin meet, Hammond’s canvases substitute grommets for wounds and orifices and burlap straps for bandages. For the artist, the cross form simultaneously serves as a stand-in for the figure, an intersection, and a plus sign, signifying both agency and accumulation. At the same time the paintings’ compositions respond to the artist’s surroundings in New Mexico, where crosses as religious symbols dot the landscape. Ultimately, the artist’s Cross Paintings position painting as a site of negotiation between what exists inside and outside the picture plane.
