Water Street, April 22-24

(a detail from the first painting I attempted, which is described a little further on...)

From my first stop in semi-rural Pittsford to a 5th floor apartment on Water Street, in the heart of downtown Rochester was quite a shift. For further contrast, my second stop was a solitary venture.  Host Joseph Becker was on hand only in spirit, having left town on business for a few days.  Usually I prefer company on tour; the interaction is a big part of why I do it. And I'm more productive when I don't have to think about cooking. But the views were good and the apartment more comfortable with just one person on hand at a time.

  

Visually, I like urban landscapes for their hard geometries, tightly knit perspectives, the patchwork of distinctive textures, surfaces built of stone, brick, glass, concrete. I especially like bridges -- in my youth I considered becoming a civil engineer -- and although my treatment of bridges and buildings is loose and impressionistic when I paint, I think pretty carefully about their construction and arrangement.

My second painting shows four bridges and some familiar downtown buildings (one seen only in rather gaudy reflection).  This detail (below) shows a bit of the Sister City Bridge. I rely much more on suggestion than delineation in my painting.  It was fun trying to "capture" an array of international flags with quick, tiny dabs of paint (click to enlarge any image):

Looking around and sketching downtown can be very stimulating. Painting in a city, however, tends to take a lot out of me.  This is especially true when I'm faced with a panoramic, high-angle view -- however exciting -- and trying to turn it into 6" x 9" compositions. I had some trouble with my first attempt: a view west toward Downtown United Presbyterian Church.  Mainly, I'm not sure my suggestion of glare on a rubble-filled lot alongside the river contributes to a coherent sense of actual space.  Hmmm.

Even if I'm just suggesting most of the details in a scene, or going for abstract composition, everything has to fit together right (more strictly so than in natural landscapes, where everything is flexible).  Urban complexity is very different from the complexity of nature.  In both settings I try to incorporate what I see into a sort of spiritual or poetic whole in the painting.  I find it more challenging to succeed in the urban environment, except at night:

Night simplifies everything. This third painting of the first day (above) shows the view northwest, across the Inner Loop.  It was done about 2 a.m., and I was too sleepy to finish it.  Still, some people who have seen my Water Street paintings in person like this one the best. Like sketches, unfinished work often shows more of the raw energy of intitial inspiration, of instinct and process, than can be seen in more developed, "finished" work.

(this post continues at: WATER STREET PART 2)