Visiting Julia (Scenes #3)

The idea of this piece came after a visit to New York City, which to me meant visiting Julia, our daughter. This was perhaps my sixth visit to New York City, but now I was viewing the city with a mature eye. The main thing that fascinated me at that time, were small local climates that were either formed naturally or by design, in this otherwise blatantly chaotic and messy city. This idea to make a cutout for NY was reinforced by our acquaintance with a late painter of New York who lived nearby in Chapel Hill, and whom we have somehow befriended, late Guy Wilkins. Very, very nice guy and a very good painter. We bought several of his large paintings, among them his acrylic “7^th Avenue” that I enclose below. I liked it for the fact that there isn’t much in it, but still, it gives a strong feel of New York.

7th Avenue by Guy Wilkins

I will use this opportunity to explain how I work on individual projects. The first and most difficult part is to have a vision of what it should look like. I do not draw many sketches, I often look for paintings with subjects similar to what I want. In the case of New York I looked at number of city photos online and I noticed that I like mainly views from above. So, I decided that that should be my perspective. But I also like people and cars being in the street, which in real life would be too small. Hence, I decided that a slight distortion of proportions between people and cars, on one hand and buildings on another would not be something I would worry too much about. To the contrary, even more regarding the animals. The animals are the central part of the piece, as in my several landscapes before.

My first draft of the arrangement of the scene was on a piece of a printed page that I was correcting flying from Paris (9 hours, economy class, boring !!), so there are some fragments of the print on it. As you can see, the final product differs quite a lot from the original design.

I looked at several hallmark buildings that I especially contemplated during my last stay, mainly art deco buildings: GE and Chrysler buildings (of 1930s) that are so impressive. The same goes for Flatiron building (quite earlier, I think 1902). You will find a reminiscence of these three building in my cutout even if their locations and details are purely fictitious

Chrysler Bldg                                           GE Bldg

The next difficult step is to re-draw the original project onto a metal sheet. I say it’s difficult because often what was good on the original drawing gets distorted on the working design. Other things are added, such as in this case, a few trees, the Chrysler building, a few rooftop water towers that I love in the New York cityscape, or the city line of New Jersey on the other side of Hudson. The Statue of Liberty is parked at the intersection on the right hand side. Some additional dogs are being walked. The rooster has jumped on a neighboring building. The original two dogs at the front were also transformed into something else. The presence of Rhino on a New York street may appear a bit absurd, but at the end, nothing is strange on the New York streets.

Then, I start cutting, and cutting and cutting…. Most commonly I start in the middle of the metal sheet, so to get my scissors there I need a cut into the sheet using a smallest screw-driver in existence, which I bang into the metal with a hammer. I use a small wooden tablet when I work during my travels, to protect the table or floor surface against damage. In the photo below of a certain advanced stage of the cutout in progress, you can see plenty of such cuts in the upper right corner. As I mention I use the nail scissors to cut. They are sufficiently hard to cut the metal –aluminum is very soft-, at the same time they are sufficiently small to work on tiny details. I have a good numbers of the nail scissors. The best I buy at the railway station traveler’s shop in Lausanne, Switzerland. They are still made in China, but clearly out of better steel than those (also made in China) we can buy in America.

Once what needed to be cut is cut, it looks like in the photo below. Not terribly attractive with all these reflections of aluminum, unless it is set completely against light. But, as the light is never ideal, the metal needs to be painted.

I do not think a realistic painting would do any good, and my instinct tells me an expressionistic application of paint in bulk is the solution. My painting table is my garage floor.

So, as you can see in the next photo, the painting is quite intense if seen in a strong direct light. Frankly, in this light, it looks ugly to me.

Fortunately, nobody sees these colors in such a light, except for me. What you see is in a gentle, subdued light with a strong contrast from behind. Like this one below:

It is amazing what tricks light may play with colors !!!.