The Orpheum Painting

Shortly after graduating from college, I began working in live stage entertainment as a stage hand, carpenter and electrician because I craved to lear how to build things with my hands. The day I started working at the Orpheum Theatre was a special one. To work in a place with such tremendous history and which had been so lovingly restored was a special opportunity for me. This painting shows the building's gargoyles, vaulted entry ceiling fading into the distance and the freshly restored neon marquee which sparkles in three colors of metal leaf. I have always visualized this piece in a dark wood paneled library. The Orpheum Theatre on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, California, opened on February 15, 1926, as the fourth and final Los Angeles venue for the Orpheum vaudeville circuit.[1] After a $3 million renovation, started in 1989, it is the most restored of the historical movie palaces in the city. The Orpheum has a Beaux Arts facade designed by movie theater architect G. Albert Lansburgh and has a Mighty Wurlitzer organ, installed in 1928, that is one of three pipe organs remaining in Southern California venues. Ink, bleach, acrylic, various metal leafs, on linen. 48" x 36". This piece is painted in mixed media on a coarse weave linen ground, stretched over a wood panel. The variety of materials enhance and obscure the texture of the linen, much of which is left exposed, creating a unique surface that shifts in changing light. The linen wraps the edges of the panel.