Shortcut

 You could shave ten minutes off your journey downtown if you leave the main road and go up this shortcut.... perhaps not.

The sixth in my "The Sleeping City" series this one is another about the contrast between the down at heel poor neighborhood and the glitzy Downtown, still kind of Edward Hopper in Gotham City. Maybe too many in this series are too downbeat so the next one might be a bit less so... I wanted to do a painting that featured pools of light with the usual imposing monolithic Gotham City-like buildings in the distance. I want all my paintings to look like paintings and not photographic in style even though I am working in a Realist manner I try to suggest detail through scuffy marks etc as opposed to doggedly painting it all in and kill the atmosphere. That is the nearest I get to the current obsession with "mark making" in Contemporary Art... although in a way these are fantasy paintings as well... I tread a fine line between the two, whether I'm successful or not....

Oil on fine cotton 16" x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.