It’s September in Avalon, New Jersey, and most boaters and beachgoers have departed the shore town for the season. A motorboat carrying a fishing crew jets across the otherwise empty sea, its form and motion in sharp contrast to the calm water and cloudless sky. That fleeting moment inspired Nicole Hammer to snap a photo during a quiet day at the beach and, later, to recreate the scene on canvas in this oil painting titled Boat Day.
“This was the only boat I saw go by the entire day,” Hammer says. “I liked how busy the boat looked in contrast to my experience in that moment. I loved the motion of it whizzing by, the colors, the sunlight sparkling on the surface. For me, this painting was about freezing a moment in time and feeling present with the view that was in front of me.”
Hammer says she has always been drawn to the coast, and she spent every summer growing up in Avalon. “I just love everything the ocean represents, how it’s constantly changing and evolving,” she says. “But also as powerful as it is, it’s so meditative to watch the tide come in and out.”
As Hammer’s love for the sea developed, so too did her passion for creating art. She began drawing in elementary school, picked up a paintbrush in high school, and never looked back. She pursued art in college and received her bachelor of fine arts degree from West Chester University in 2022. When she made painting her full-time career in 2024, it felt natural to blend her passions by focusing her artwork on coastal scenes.
Hammer paints directly from reference photos she takes herself, and she says her work begins the moment she presses the shutter. “Sometimes I’m not necessarily looking for a scene and it just kind of happens, like this painting,” she says.
Though her paintings are highly photorealistic, her goal is to keep the memory of the experience alive in the final work, to capture the feeling she had from behind the camera, while simultaneously leaving enough room for viewers to superimpose their own experiences.
“I try to keep my paintings and scenes fairly simple but open-ended enough that maybe it could reawaken a memory for someone else,” she says. She wants people to feel they can step right into the painting. “That’s exactly what I try to communicate with my work, that it’s kind of a window into someone else’s experience or a memory that they have.”
Hammer estimates she completes roughly 30 pieces per year, depending on the size. Boat Day is part of her Shore Collection of eight original oil paintings depicting coastal landscapes.
September 2025
