Frederick Hammersley is known for easel-sized abstractions that explore the interaction of color and geometric shape. He divided his works into three distinct categories: “hunches,” “geometrics,” and “organics.” His earliest works, hunch paintings, began with a single shape and grew with intuitive additions. Made with a palette knife, the geometric paintings began as studies in a sketchbook—Hammersley started with geometric grids and produced rhythmic orchestrations of shapes. For the organic paintings, on the other hand, Hammersley threw rules away, painting curved lines and blending color directly on canvas.