Hambleton’s “Shadowman” paintings of the early 1980’s resemble life-sized silhouetted images of distorted, surreal, and insubstantial people. These silhouettes were splashed and brushed with black acrylic paint on buildings or across urban landscapes to startle unsuspecting pedestrians. "Night LIfe" is example of Hambleton’s Shadowman, which has been turned into an individual, handmade book and includes a wooden box for preservation.

The box is made of pondarosa pine and poplar, the book is bound and mounted on 100% rag museum board, and the work is painted on Japanese Kinwashi paper. Hambleton made 53 of these books, with each being a unique variant.

Along with close friends Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Canadian-born painter Richard Hambleton (b. 1954) pioneered the 1980s Lower East Side art movement in New York, generating buzz with his “public art” painted on unexpected street corners as well as his street art inspired canvases, which were exhibited in major galleries. Using cryptic imagery and dark aesthetics, Hambleton has explored a “Mass Murder” concept with his police chalk outlines and victim inspired paintings, which led to the development of his “Shadowman” paintings. Hambleton studied Painting and Art History at the Emily Carr School of Art in Vancouver, Canada, earning his BFA in 1975. That same year he founded the gallery and performance space, “Pumps” Center for Alternative Art in Vancouver. 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’.