Cleaning up the text with a #2 round (detail)
I'm coming down the home stretch now on this new 4' x 6' oil painting after three months of steady work. Signs have been a lifelong fascination for me, both for their appearance and many meanings. Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Christopher Wool and Robert Cottingham are some of the better known artists who have worked extensively with semiotics and the visual word. Many times I've wished I could simplify things as elegantly as they have in their very different ways, partially because it would probably speed up my rate-of-production...but alas I'm still exploring more complex imagery in my own quest to consider words as elements of a bigger picture.
Some of the most painstaking parts of my painting process are the multiple overpaintings of text, where high contrast juxtapositions of intense colors so essential to legibility in the signs create an extreme technical challenge. I've found I have to carefully lay in the lighter of the letters or the background first, and then work the wet darker color up to the edges of the first one while not allowing any smearing to mix the two. It usually takes lots of small corrections before all the letters are correctly shaped, spaced and proportioned, and then all those junctions between the two colors need a final gentle blending pass to make them "read" properly, or the sharp demarcation will distract the eye and ruin the effect. In an earlier post I discussed the complications in this already difficult process when I've painted signs in languages with different character sets like Chinese: Chinatown
Another aspect of my paintings I've written about previously has come up in this one as well, and that's my knack for catching scenes I carefully select as having the right amount of visual texture that turn out to be just about to change forever, despite, or perhaps because of their decades of existence. In this case, I shot the reference photos last June. When I paint I get curious about the businesses, buildings and other identifiable details and I'll confess I sometimes call the number on a sign while I'm painting it thousands of miles away in my studio, just to see if I can deepen the connection.
Several times it's led to interesting conversations and new followers, but once again, this time the fried chicken place was gone just six months later because it had been replaced by yet another upscale chain eatery. The new spot had also displaced the other two ground floor tenants on W39th street, a shoe repair and a fabric shop. I did a little exploring online and by using the NYC tax lot database (endless hours of fun) I could see that the 20 story building on the corner had been built in 1925 and was actually L-shaped so it didn't include the liquor store, set into the notch. Since it had survived, I called and got the clerk, who filled me in on the recent changes on the block. Once again I'm glad I captured the scene before it vanished and that I was able to "preserve" so many of its details.
My wonderful gallery representation: LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
And as always, you can also contact me directly by email: info@sethtane.com and follow my occasional photo posts on: Instagram