Brooklyn Streets

Brooklyn Streets.  18x24 inches, oil on linen canvas.  A view of Carleton Avenue meeting Park Place at Flatbush Avenue.

Plaza Island

Flatbush Avenue runs through (on the dotted line) Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Several other streets also approach or circle the plaza.  Fortunately, after one dodges the traffic, you can walk around and through the Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch.  Then you have to dodge the traffic again to get off the plaza island.  6x8 oil on panel.

Flatbush Barrels

The eighth Flatbush painting: a rare moment when the sidewalk was empty of people, though it is populated by traffic control barrels.  To figure out what they are called, I found a website called Crowd Control Warehouse.  Sounds ominous.   They are colorful.

Flatbush Cyclists

This is the seventh 12x12 oil on panel painting in the Flatbush series.  I think I'll do one more and move on to other things, or other sizes.  I used to be a serious cyclist years ago.  I would not want to ride a bicycle anywhere near Flatbush Avenue today.  It's tough enough being a pedestrian.

Abstraction on Flatbush Avenue

What appeals to me about this view of Flatbush Avenue is how the sky in the middle background unites with the tee shirt in the middle foreground to form a u-shape.  One could say the same thing about the two u-shapes on either side as well, though the middle one is more distinct and the distances between the sky and tee shirt much larger.  It's this kind of relationship that a painter can make which is nearly impossible to see outside of a painting.

I've been reading a lot about the painter Delacroix lately.  The exhibition at the Met has spurred me on, though I've always had an interest in Delacroix since reading his journal years ago.  I like Delacroix because he used color and composition in a formal, abstract way even though his paintings are all about stories, whether myths, battles, Shakespeare, etc.  His formal methods are seemingly hidden, and simultaneously right there for all to see.

The painting is 12x12 oil on panel.

Flatbush Revelation

These Flatbush Avenue paintings have become revelatory for me as I work on them loosely and comfortably.  The experience of walking in the city is always one of sharp contrasts, simultaneous attractions, and distractions.  Everywhere you look there's too much.  Turning that experience into paint is what I'm trying to do.  This one is also 12x12 oil on panel.  I'm running out of square panels.

Flatbush Afternoon

Flatbush Avenue. Late afternoon.  12x12 oil on panel.

Flatbush River

Flatbush Avenue appears as wide as a river at the corner of Sterling Place.  Even when I would drive across it, I wondered if the light would stay green long enough to make it over, never mind trying to make it across on foot.  The pedestrian stripes are testimony to the frequent diggings, resurfacings, and repaintings that urban surfaces undergo, like a painter's canvas.  12x12 oil on panel.

Thickly Packed Flatbush Avenue

Walking on Flatbush Avenue in the direction of downtown Brooklyn reveals a whole new skyline if you haven't been here recently.  The buildings are as thickly packed as the people on the sidewalk.   I visited downtown last week.  The new construction is everywhere, inhuman in scale.  There are still some venerable, smaller buildings left, but for how long?  12x12 oil on panel.

Flatbush

The name "Flatbush" comes from the Dutch meaning a 'wooded plain', according to Wikipedia.  So it's nice to see a tree on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.  Actually, there are a number of trees along Flatbush Avenue, even though now it's essentially a hard-surfaced, heavily built-up, travelled and populated place.  I was trying to achieve a dense, textured surface in this painting.  It may become part of a series.  12x12 oil on panel.