In this unique work on paper, Richard Hambleton employs his distinctive "Shadowman" style of painting to an image of the Twin Towers, in memory of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. Executed in pastel, acrylic, and colored pencil, the black, faded shadows of the buildings appear as ashes against a billowing pink sky. Fragile and faint, Hambleton’s vanishing representation of the iconic New York emblem is a haunting yet apt portrait of the city. This work was given to the present owner by the artist on the anniversary of September 11th.

Richard Hambleton (b. 1954) is a Canadian painter currently living and working in the Lower East Side of New York City. Hambleton is remembered as one of the major artists, who, along with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, had great success coming out of the New York City art scene in the 1980s. Hambleton’s work is often compared to graffiti art, though Hambleton himself considers this work to be “public art.” Hambleton is best known for his “Mass Murder Concept” and his “Shadowman” paintings. The “Mass Murder Concept” was a series of works where Hambleton would paint the police chalk outline around bodies of volunteer “homicide victims” and splash red paint within the outline, leaving behind a realistic crime scene. His later “Shadowman” paintings of the early 1980s resemble life-sized silhouetted images of strange people. Hambleton painted these “Shadowmen” in other cities as well, including in Paris and, as some believe, on the Berlin Wall. In 2011, Andy Valmorbida and Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld presented a retrospective of his work in New York, NY. His work was also featured in the seminal 2011 Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA exhibition "Art in the Streets."