My Painting, The View from the El, Featured at the First Street Gallery's Exhibition: Nocturne.

The View from the El, 22" x 30," watercolor and gouache on paper.

 

My painting The View from the El is featured in the national juried exhibition Nocturne:  First Street Gallery, 547 West 27th Street, Suite 514, NYC.  July 28 - August 26, 2023.  Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 11am - 6 pm.  I am thrilled to be a part of this fascinating show:  The theme is a perfect fit for me as I have painted many nocturnal scenes of New York over the years.  I hope you get to see it before it closes! 

         My nocturnal scenes of New York are evocative of everything I most associate with the city:  A sense of anonymity, or aloneness; the insignificance of the individual in the midst of a place this huge, this densely populated.  In my painting, The View from the El, the sole 24-hour business is a lonely beacon in a sea of darkness, which is meant to be a metaphor for urban isolation-----a Hopperesque "lonely city."  Despite the angst, there is something magical about the way nighttime transforms the urban landscape:  The darkness obscures the massiveness of the architecture, while electric lights create an illusory and ethereal environment.  When it is very dark out, much of the solid structure of the city disappears, leaving it to be defined instead by the illumination and ambient light from the street, storefronts and neon signs.

        Like many of my nightscapes, The View from the El is painted with watercolor.  The medium    is particularly suited for what I want to convey:  such as the ethereal quality even the blackest night sky has; the diffusion of light against the darkness; and the limitations and illusory aspect of perception.  Before I began painting, though, I mapped out the composition in pencil.  Then, I began the painting process with layers of translucent watercolor:  The multiple layers create a sense of insubstantiality and depth more readily than a single opaque layer could.  Special attention was paid to the tone and value as multiple washes were applied.  I left the paper unpainted where the finished work is white, or only lightly tinted.  I then added white gouache to those areas that I wanted to have a heightened luminosity.

        I studied with Paul Ching-Bor at the Art Students League (as well as others).  It is from Ching-Bor that I learnt the technique of using a combination of translucent and opaque watercolors.  The technique has made it possible for me to create more varied surfaces and heightened contrasts of value and luminosity.  Which has allowed me to create more powerfully evocative and expressive paintings than could be achieved with a more traditional approach to watercolor.

        Go see my painting in person!  You will not be disappointed!