Andy Hamblin
Artist Andy Hamblin speaks to Amelia Saxena about his career, continuous cruising and cat companion
“People on the waterways know me as the man with the cat flap-boat,” laughs Andy, a fine art painter and continuous cruiser. He’s lived aboard his 57ft narrowboat Hush with his 15-year-old feline companion Hugo for three years.
“Hugo’s a mostly outdoor cat but when we first moved afloat, I had to keep him inside the boat for six weeks so that he was absolutely sure it was his space, his home. During that time I was trying to work out how he was going to get on and off the boat so that he could come and go as he pleased. I didn’t want to cut holes in the stern or bow doors.”
The solution was a design of Andy’s own making. He replaced the glass in one of the portholes with a panel that contains a cat flap and a ledge for Hugo to use as he pleases, but which can be padlocked for security reasons. It can also be swapped with the porthole glass opposite depending on which side of the canal they’re moored. “I sat down, worked it all out and built it on the move. It’s been his famous porthole cat flap ever since. The number of dog walkers and cyclists who stop and have a chat with me about it is astounding.”
Original inspiration
Battlesbridge Mill captured in fine detail.
Andy’s creativity is no surprise, however. He has been a freelance artist specialising in oil-on-canvas landscapes for the last 20 years, after studying for four years at the Southend School of Art and enjoying a career in the advertising industry undertaking conceptual design and digital retouching.
“I started painting with oils when I was about nine years old, and the first picture that I produced was put into a competition and won. It all came about from a school trip to the National Gallery in London, and as a young boy I sat in front of John Constable’s The Hay Wain and it pretty much overwhelmed me – the size, the scale, the intricacy. It’s just such an amazing painting. I’ve spent my whole life trying to recreate that – every time I paint, I think of that image.”
Hugo perches on his bespoke porthole cat flap, designed and made by Andy.
Accomplished with astonishing detail, Andy produces traditional and contemporary landscapes, as well as the occasional portrait. To the passing eye his paintings could be mistaken for photographs. “My work is all about the view, the details of the trees in the distance as well as individual blades of grass in the foreground. “I’ve had several big exhibitions and, while looking at some of my larger landscapes, quite a few people have ended up standing there in tears, which has really shocked me. They’ve said that you could almost walk into the paintings. Art is a powerful thing.”
