Pipe Dreams
9" x 13"
Watercolor
Recently I have been drawn to the haunting environments of old mills near my home in New England, the cavernous site of a demolition in the heart of Washington, D.C., views from the train – all with the same sense of fascination with the elements of industry, decay, and construction. And like Charles Scheeler, I find the New England Mills stately monuments to the Industrial age – some now housing the industry of artists. I have found myself on a journey observing those boundaries where the feats of human engineering confront the relentless forces of nature’s wrecking crews –like gravity and the weeds germinating in those inevitable cracks; all revealing the varied textures of time and transformation. Lacing around the base of these worn and skeletal structures is that familiar threshold of debris and rubble, the elements of construction reduced to simpler material. This pulverized matter of half finished buildings going up or the ruins of those coming down is a lot like the pigments that I, in turn, manipulate as I construct my painted equivalents.