Subway Sonnet #63 Painting

Oil, acrylic and paper on hand stretched canvas, 48x48 and ready to hang. The words at the top "Don't ever go with the flow, be the flow" Inspired by music lyrics, quotes and nyc. About the work - I never considered myself a storyteller, until I did. My paintings are visual narratives of my experiences, of love, of places (existent and non-existent),of emotions and of memories I recall from growing up in New York in the late 70s and 80s. The surfaces are derived from memories of the rusted subway car, the public telephone booths, rolling steel cages that secure neighborhood stores after closing. The mark-making in these paintings emulates the process by which all these metallic surfaces become the backdrop for the graphic history of the neighborhoods. “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls -(Sounds of Silence, 1964). In this environment, the sharpie, self-adhesive sticker, pasted hand-bill and aerosol paint can quickly communicate and populate an entire neighborhood overnight promoting local punk rock bands and their gigs, political messaging, self-expression, and the advertisement of services from 24-hour plumbers to local sex workers. My paintings feel as if they have been created by random collaboration in the same way public telephone booths and trains quickly filled up with stickers and graffiti. The surface is archaeological, stratified with graphic artifacts as some, previously placed, are torn away and others overlaid upon existing iconography. The picture plane is scratched and eroded and scrawled upon. Song lyrics and Shakespearean quotes share the same space with philosophy and street slang. There is rough poetry in the un-painterly rhythm and coarseness of this approach. Icons from the world’s religions and philosophies, pictures torn from art and fashion magazines and references to lyrics from my favorite bands find their way on my canvas.