Cityscapes

Sev­er­al years back, I was look­ing through a brochure for the McMichael Gallery Juried Show and I was see­ing all this work that looked just like what I had been doing — pic­tures of beau­ti­ful land­scapes. This is a crowd­ed field. Around the same time, I would be watch­ing C.S.I.-N.Y. and to show that the action was going back to the lab, these amaz­ing aer­i­al shots would be spliced in. We’d be fly­ing over the tops of sky­scrap­ers at reach-out-and-touch height. The mag­nif­i­cent angu­lar abstracts formed from build­ings were rem­i­nis­cent of paint­ings by Hoff­man or Mon­dri­an. The slow pan that ampli­fied the rad­i­cal per­spec­tive gives the feel of drop­ping into. I could watch a whole show of just these shots.
I want­ed to paint what I saw. I start­ed in a very prim­i­tive way.
 

Going to New York and hir­ing a heli­copter and get­ting a bet­ter cam­era and learn­ing to take great pic­tures was beyond doing. I rent­ed DVD’s of C.S.I.-N.Y. and watched a sea­son in fast for­ward paus­ing when I found a pos­si­ble image and shoot­ing the T.V. screen with a film cam­era. I shot two rolls of film but when I got back the prints I had only one or two use­able images. One of them became the paint­ing “C.S.I.-N.Y.”

This method of image cap­ture was­n’t work­ing for me, so with trep­i­da­tion I turned to the inter­net. IMAGE OVERLOAD. I scrolled through innu­mer­able pho­tos until, final­ly, I found a shot I liked — Times Square done for a Newsweek article.

At around the same time, my friend Car­men — who designed the Domes­tic Picas­so Cat­a­logue and is fea­tured in the drip paint­ing of Pol­lock upend­ing the Thanks­giv­ing table (she says I gave her a red nose) — had a plan to make indus­tri­al fix­tures to suit loft spaces. As a pos­si­ble bed­spread I ordered a truck tarp from Tarp-man (who was actu­al­ly tarp-lady) . She sewed up this eight foot square, treat­ed “Cor­do­va” can­vas tarp with a heavy bor­der and grom­mets. Car­men and I tossed this mon­strous thing on a bed and instant­ly dis­cov­ered it was not a work­able idea. So now I had a spare eight foot square can­vas. The treat­ed side was­n’t going to be good for paint­ing but the under­side was use­able. I prepped it like a floor cloth- four coats of sand­ed emul­sion. The sur­face is like a plas­ter wall. The brush sticks a bit and the paint soaks in quick­ly. Image and can­vas unit­ed to become “Squared Times”. Give it ten coats of var­nish and it could be the liv­ing room rug.

The pic­tures all look like they were done by the same guy even though the images orig­i­nat­ed in numer­ous dif­fer­ent places. My broth­er Jay sent me pho­tos he’d tak­en from a trip up the Empire State Build­ing. He was the source for “Blue N.Y.” and ” Pin­stripe Suit”. Moira, my sis­ter , who works in a very tall office tow­er sup­plied the orig­i­nal for “T.O.Boogie”. Anne , my sig­nif­i­cant oth­er, took the pho­to that result­ed in “Van­cou­ver Mosa­ic”. The two Paris pieces and “Out MOMA’s Win­dow” were my own shots.

 

By far , the largest source for mate­r­i­al was a pho­to shoot by David Ack­er for the Den­ver Post. I nev­er used Ack­er’s whole image, just chunks. Pieces of his pho­tos are the basis of – “Three Eyed King”, “Edge of Empire”, “PAN AM”, “Isaac and Rebec­ca”, “Bavaria”, “Danc­ing in the Street”, “Por­trait”, and “Moth­er and Child” and “Grids and Van­ish­ing Points”. A fact pecu­liar to source appro­pri­a­tion is I have prob­a­bly exam­ined the pho­tographs in greater detail than the pho­tog­ra­ph­er ever did. It’s fun­ny to look at Ack­ers full pic­tures and to pick out my paint­ings that now reside in them.

We were doing a house-paint­ing job for a cou­ple who had a pho­to mur­al of the flat iron build­ing lean­ing against the patio doors. I watched the light stream through it as we ate lunch and I found myself think­ing how much I want­ed to paint it. I lat­er Googled Flat iron build­ing N.Y. , I pulled up all kinds of images but not the one I was look­ing for. I final­ly found it under IKEA / Ange­lo Cav­al­li . If you want the pho­to mur­al IKEA’s where you get it. I found and used a pho­to I liked even bet­ter by Joseph Eta.

Why paint a pic­ture of a com­mer­cial­ly avail­able print? It seems kin­da crazy. The rea­son is-it becomes some­thing oth­er. This is true of all the pieces.

Doing a pic­ture from a source is like assem­bling the unfa­mil­iar from an instruc­tion man­u­al. It’s a lit­tle like doing a jig saw puz­zle. Often I’ll see a shape in the source, turn to the can­vas to see where it goes, turn back to check it and it has van­ished. A lot of the cap­ture has to be quick and con­fi­dent. The draw­ing is a guide but the coloura­tion and the shad­ing require a lot of look­ing and then, accu­rate inter­pre­ta­tion in pigment.

After the draw­ing is on and the under paint­ing is com­plete, aspects of the cal­lig­ra­phy start tak­ing on lives of their own. The pic­tures become pop­u­lat­ed with images that morph into oth­er images, open­ing up a strange Rorschach inkblot world.

If you look care­ful­ly you will begin to see a tam­bourine man, a mer­maid , ele­phants and ray guns, a baboon, a slob­ber­ing drool­ing mon­ster and crea­tures from the deep. Even words begin appearing.

In the pic­ture of the Flat Iron Build­ing I call “Ironed Flat” you will find the mer­maid. She morphs into a loud puffy-faced crea­ture like Divine, a horse gal­lops down the road­way as build­ings look down with bemused expressions.

The full title of “The Three Eyed King” should be “The Three Eyed King and his giant robot who casts the shad­ow of a sea mon­ster”. There’re oth­er things hap­pen­ing as well. The crawl­ing baby seems to be stran­gling an elas­tic bod­ied duck crea­ture. A tooth­less croc­o­dile hov­ers. The sooth­ing aqua colour of the street calms the nerves and the green of the roof at the bot­tom pro­vides as many min­er­als as a sal­ad. I hope the view­er can trav­el into the pic­tures by fol­low­ing the obvi­ous images and branch­ing out to find their own. As in a trance i want the view­er to feel the shapes and rhythms and pat­terns unfold around them.

“Danc­ing in the Street” should per­haps return to its first name of ‘Faces in the Street” as it should be Detroit or Philadel­phia P.A. to wear the moniker cor­rect­ly. The faces were obvi­ous, the danc­ing hap­pened when I gave it a con­ser­v­a­tive frame.

I was re-read­ing sec­tions of the book “Rem­brandt’s Eyes”, see­ing in the repro­duc­tions, paint mas­tery to make you weep. Once I saw these two build­ings as a cou­ple, I was remind­ed of the “Jew­ish Bride- Isaac and Rebec­ca” and so that’s what this pic­ture is about. On the left is Isaac with his enor­mous smoke­stack and relat­ed appendage. He has creepy hands reach­ing out to his larg­er some­what bland Mrs. She seems a bit dazed.

Oth­er anthro­po­mor­phic pic­tures are “Moth­er and Child” (two build­ings in a del­i­cate rela­tion­ship), and “Por­trait” (a ver­ti­go induc­ing — portrait).

Not all the pic­tures work in this way. The ones I took the pho­tos for are all fair­ly nor­mal real­ist paintings.(this may say some­thing about my pho­tog­ra­phy). In the case of “Out MOMA’s Win­dow” and “Paris-Metro” what’s most inter­est­ing is how they are paint­ed. “MOMA” looks the way it does because it is paint­ed on an unprimed pan­el. If there is a mes­sage beyond Con­nol­ly’s Restau­rant Pub it might be that I’m look­ing out the win­dow instead of at the rooms full of art behind me. But that was only true of the moment, I did look at a lot of pic­tures. “Paris-Metro” is paint­ed in Mar­belux, a com­mer­cial wall coat­ing that I have treat­ed as neg­a­tive fres­co. Instead of plas­ter­ing the wall and paint­ing it, I have applied the coloured plas­ter to the sur­face. It is even more awk­ward than paint­ing with stuc­co. Mar­belux won’t even drip. It’s like paint­ing with extra thick, extra sticky cake icing. It’s a dif­fi­cult medi­um to use. In the pow­er out­age my tins froze and I lost sev­en­ty-five dol­lars worth of Marbelux.

The “Cityscapes” show had it debut at the Wych­wood Gallery now named the Peter McK­endrick Com­mu­ni­ty Gallery. Don — from “Peace of Mind Art Trans­port Co” — drove the pieces to the gallery. It was the first warm day in months. In shirt­sleeves we went to lunch. Anne came by lat­er and rearranged my order, mak­ing it pro­nounced­ly bet­ter. She has an apti­tude for see­ing the large pic­ture and curat­ed the show to the bet­ter­ment of all the pieces. A beau­ti­ful day, a beau­ti­ful show, every­thing was look­ing sun­ny. Then — the next day was one of the worst bliz­zards of the win­ter — fig­ures. By open­ing night the world was back in the “let’s stay home” deep freeze. A huge thank you to all those devot­ed art lovers who ven­tured out and were so sup­port­ive of my efforts. An extra spe­cial thank you to those who pur­chased pieces. I’m sor­ry more peo­ple could­n’t see the show- it was only up for six days. I have con­tem­plat­ed remount­ing “Cityscapes” but I’m already on the next idea so I’m not sure. You may have to set­tle for see­ing it on line.

Eric Ross­er
Whit­by — April / 2014