last drawings of Brooklyn

Our Lady's Field (with Don's house)

      So over the past few weeks, after putting away the paints and the French easel, I've decided to focus on doing a series of drawings on paper, in charcoal. I figured for this last series, I would choose subjects that are familiar and close to me, the Brooklyn neighborhood where I have lived for the past 15 years, Windsor Terrace.

Flooded path in Prospect Park

     There's something about the act of drawing which brings me back to the essentials: line, shadow, form, and mark-making. I decided that I would do drawings of things that I see in my everyday life: the intersection where I go to get groceries and coffee, the path I walk along to take my kids to the playground, and the ball-field I pass to get back to my house. All of these were done on 22" x 30" paper, and executed with charcoal powder and charcoal pencil. Some of them were done in 'one shot'; that is, in about a 2-3 hour session, on site, with a portable easel. Others required more time, so I worked on them over several days, usually in 2 hour stints.

16th Street and Prospect Park West (NW corner)

     One of the things that I love most about working from life, is this sense of being totally in the moment. Out there on the street, particularly at a busy intersection, you're just one element among thousands amidst the flux of life. At times, the honking cars, trucks blocking your view, passers-by stopping to look and ask questions, become a distraction and hinderance to the work, but they are also part of it's 'life-force', an experience I'm trying to capture.  This becomes particularly more heightened with drawing, rather than painting...probably because drawing is a simpler and more immediate act. There is a general sense of frenetic energy on the streets of Brooklyn which somehow seeps into the work.

16th Street and Prospect Park West (SW corner)

     Someone stopped to ask me why I just don't take a photo and draw it in my studio. The short answer to that: because I can't hear the birds chirping in my studio or observe the light sliding across the sidewalk. Being 'in the moment' is just as important to me as 'making a picture'. There is also a sense of continuity with my life that becomes apparent to me in these drawings: I'd see friends on the street that I knew, who didn't know my art, and were just floored that I was out there doing pictures of regular everyday Brooklyn. All sorts of people became my audience: the old lady on her way back to the assisted-living center down the street, the guy who works at the bagel shop around the corner, a local panhandler and neighborhood drunkard, the parent of a fellow student at my son's school. Somehow, the experience of being on site and in the mix of urban life, feeds the life of the drawing. With our move less than 2 weeks away, I feel time slipping away....like I should have been doing this work years ago. There are not enough days left to do all the drawings I want to do. Somehow, that makes them all the more vital, necessary and exciting...yet also, bittersweet and sad.

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So long Red Hook

   Over the years, I've done a number of paintings in Red Hook, the waterfront port area of Brooklyn, close to my studio in nearby Gowanus. It's such an amazing place, with cobblestone streets, vast harbor views and an aging lot of brick warehouse buildings. It has the feeling of what I think New York must have been like a hundred years ago.

   I finished these 2 paintings today. I've had them in the studio for a awhile, where I'd pull them out, noodle around with them, and then turn them around again to face the wall for awhile. The big building featured in both, is an old grain terminal building, a huge massive structure which you can see from different spots along the Gowanus/Red Hook area. It's vacant now, and as far as I can tell, is not being used for anything. There's a concrete company operating next to it, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it's dismantled, leaving a void in the landscape.

  These will probably be the last paintings I do of Brooklyn, with our move to Charleston less than a month away. I might do a few more drawings of the neighborhood, but then it will be time to pack up the studio and collect myself for the move. I'm already planning a series of drawings of our new house, and I'm eager to jump in and explore new sites to paint in Charleston.  Stay tuned for info on some exhibitions I'll be participating in here in NY soon...
  

Kentile Floors (continued...)

14" x 21"

I finished 2 more paintings with the "Kentile Floors" sign. The first one is from my studio roof, where I'm able to get directly across from it, looking down slightly on the opposite roof. The other is from the same spot where I did some other paintings, looking at the sign from the back, a greater distance away. I like the idea of painting the letters in reverse...I'm going to try and search out more spots where I can see this.

The sign is such a landmark in the area...something people recognize and respond to. I've painted it so many times, and each time I do, I curse myself because all those tiny rods of the scaffolding are so intricate and difficult to paint. There's something about it that keeps bringing me back, though. It acts like a huge sun dial, casting long shadows on the roof while the chroma of the red letters fluctuates with the passing light.

Maybe because this winter has been so long and gloomy, but I've become really enamored with the light this March. The sun is still very low in the sky, which is causing these great long violet shadows, but it is also very bright and crisp.  Most of these recent paintings have been 'quick' ones....4-5 hours at the most. (Trying to get as much done of Brooklyn as I can before the move)

12" x 18"

Gowanus Canal

12" x 18"

Here's a few new paintings I just completed.  They were done fairly close to my studio, where 2nd ave. dead-ends by the canal. The future site of the new Whole Foods is off to the right...big news in the neighborhood over the past few years.  Long story short, Whole Foods bought a huge lot in Gownaus (3rd ave. and 3rd street), did some tests on the soil, found it to be completely contaminated with heavy metals and oil waste, dropped the project like a hot potato, then resumed a few years later after agreeing to do the millions of dollars clean up on the land. The entire canal area was designated a Superfund site last year, which caused a lot of uproar and heavy debating about the future of the area. All in all, I think the designation was the best option, allowing for the most realistic option for cleaning up the area. Well enough about that...I'm just a painter.

The spot I was painting from was in a really weird area: a dead end overlooking the canal. To my left was the Department of Sanitation lot, where they store the trucks, plows and salt; to my right, the garage and dispatch unit for those double decker buses that do the city sight seeing tours.  It's sometimes oddly comforting painting in locations like this. The hum of the machinery and activity adds to my sense of focus and purpose...I guess I just like painting alongside mechanics and construction workers, too. A lot of them usually come over and check out what I'm doing periodically...with the occasional "Yo, check out Picasso" or "Hey, it's Michaelangelo!" They probably think it the strangest thing in the world that I'm out there with an easel painting this shit-hole of a place.

As I was painting, all these tiny gnats were swarming around me, coming up from out of the ground at the edge of the canal. They kept getting stuck in the wet paint, which I would have to pick out later in the studio. I also ended up inhaling a bunch while I was out there....hopefully they weren't carcinogenic.

10" x 15"

Gowanus-A Work in Progress

So I've got 4 new paintings started. The weather has been warmer, that is over 50 degrees, and has peaked around 70 for a few days here. I've found that the temps need to be above 50 for the paint to work right for me...any colder and it sort of beads up on the surface as the paint gets thinned out. I guess it's also a comfort thing...hard to paint when you can't feel your fingertips. The light is very beautiful right now, the sun's position causing sharp shadows with a slightly grey-blue-purple cast. The sun's still relatively low in the sky, but with the spring equinox and the time change, things are noticably changing. Actually, the most beautiful time I want to paint is at dusk...a golden light with the sky turning a deep cobalt color as the sun sets.

The canvases I've been working on are a proportion that I like; a ratio of 2:3. I've bracketed them incrementally: 10" x 15"; 12" x 18"; and 14" x 21". There's something pleasing about this relationship which works well in a landscape format. With smaller, quick paintings like these, I pre-determine the size, rather than working out the size based on a drawing or idea. For these, I've started with a sketch book drawing, then sized up from there, using a grid and an appropriate canvas. I'm working on half of them during overcast days, half on sunny days, this way whatever the weather, I've got a spot to go to and something to paint. Since they are relatively small, my goal is to finish them in about 2 or 3 sessions, with some extra fine tuning in the studio.

Sketch book study

It's starting to bother me how really disgusting the Gowanus Canal area is. I'm not sure if the garbage problem is getting worse or I'm just noticing it more. This sign is close to one of the locations I'm painting from:

I like how the color of the sign works well within the painting, but somehow the warning becomes more and more disturbing the longer I think about it. What a complete environmental disaster this place has become.

"Kentile Floors" in progress

Charleston, SC

So, my time living in Brooklyn is officially coming to an end. Since the beginning of 2011, I began the long, tedious, and exhausting process of finishing up our house renovations, with the intent to sell. This basically has taken up all my physical and mental energy since January (hence my lack of painting and blog posting). The past few weeks have been a whirlwind of craziness: We put our house on the market February 20th, went down to Charleston for 2 weeks, found a house there that we fell in love with, signed a contract to buy it, found buyers for our house in Brooklyn, signed that contract, and found schools for our kids to attend. Now we're back, and as the dust settles, I've got a few months left to do some last paintings of Brooklyn.

Both my wife and I feel like we're in this weird in-between area: not quite here, not quite there. I'm really excited to move down there, and think this the boldest and best decision I've made in my life. Our goal is to set ourselves up with a lifestyle that will allow both my wife and I to make our art. Our plan is to build out an old industrial space, converting it into artists' studios, thereby creating some income and an artistic community, while giving us the time to pursue our art careers. There's definitely a need for more studio spaces there and we've heard some great things about the art scene in general. I won't go too much into it now, as we still have a lot of planning and work to do on that once we move down there, but we're excited about the possibilities.

I'm also looking forward to seeing how this new place will affect my painting. There are definitely some similarities with New York: they're both port cities, have a lot of old buildings and different architectural styles. The light is much brighter being further south, and warmer (much warmer in the summer!) Whereas New York is a vertical city, Charleston lies in the low country. I feel my orientation to the landscape will begin to change. I'm intrigued by getting to know and paint the downtown area too...it has an Old World type of feel, with different vegetation and trees. I also love the gigantic live oak trees covered with Spanish moss....I know those are going to be fantastic to draw and paint.

But, for the next few months I'm going to focus on Brooklyn. I've prepped these canvases in my studio, and am basically going to try and draw and paint as much of this city that I love and have called home for the past 15 years. Stay tuned for seeing the work in progress...