This is the first of three collage paintings I created from sketchbooks of my life in New York City. The layers of collage overlay elements that weren’t working, but they are there if anyone wants to indulge in an archaeological dig;). The first and densest excavates from my drawings, poems and collage experiments to define, if possible, the moments that led me to NYC and what happened as I landed on Avenue A in 1996. In each piece of this three part series, I’ve added mirrors intended to capture the past and the now.
Using a recycled piece of Plexiglas from another project, I sought to experiment with the elements of painting—using heavy gesso, mixing acrylic with oil and finally using a high gloss varnish to complete the piece. It occurred to me I had painted terra firma.
I began this painting in 2015. It went through much iteration looking nothing like this final piece. I began to think about how to capture a summer in the Arctic—which is short, cold with a sun that rarely sets. I layered mesh onto the landforms to bring out sharp glints of ice breaking apart. It seemed natural to paint this landscape in black and white. Brrr. Are you cold now?
This painting took a lot of twists and turns. It began when I became fascinated with Clayton Valley in Nevada. The vast desert is rich in lithium waiting to be mined. Lithium is the key component in the batteries which run our Tesla’s and other <cough, ahem> EV vehicles. I decided to add string as a surveyor might. The final touch are several strips of red plexiglass highlighting crucial deposits of “white gold,” or, Lithium.
Oh, what a long history this painting has. Originally, it was a print given to me from a friend. It seemed ordinary until I researched its origins. The SS United States was a state of the art luxury liner in the 1930’s. When I moved to Santa Cruz, I missed New York City and began painting over the print to create the explosive city in all its brightness and clichés. My goal was to create a cacophony of color analogous with the experience of being a New Yorker.
