Richard Hambleton (born June 1952) is an artist-painter currently living and working in the Lower East Side of New York City. Richard Hambleton has been called the godfather of street art. He is the surviving member of a group who, together with Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, had great success coming out of the New York City art scene during the booming art market of the 1980s. Much of Hambleton's work is compared to graffiti art, however, Hambleton considers his work to be "public art".