Wacker Dr (The Blue Hour) Print

I make art as my main form of communication. Conveying thoughts, ideas, and opinions in the form of paintings or drawings. Specifically, I communicate through shading, blending, my brush strokes, the way I put colors down, and the colors I choose to use. When I paint I like to emphasize color over detail. Not to say that I leave details out completely but just enough to get the job done. The goal is to invoke the same feelings I get when looking at the reference photos. So in other words, my paintings compared to the references won't be exact but the feeling will be exact. The same goes for my drawings, however instead of color, the emphasis is the lighting and contrasts. The women in my drawings won't look exactly like the references and neither will my cityscapes, but the lighting and contrasts will be exact. So in all, I can strip away all of the unnecessary details in a photo and leave just what's important, giving you the same feeling. That's why I make art. So I use to work downtown. I'm a cook at a restaurant called Aster Hall, located in the 900 building off of Michigan Avenue. I live in Indiana so take the train everyday on the South shore line from East Chicago to Millennium Station. From Millennium, I usually take a 22 min walk from Millennium to the 900 building. On this whole journey each day I usually see mostly the same faces. Each person making their way to wherever they have to go. Each person on an individual hustle. Now the irony is, the people like myself, we work downtown, a very wealthy area, but we don't live there. We don't enjoy the fruits of our labor. However the few things we do get to enjoy are the sights. The one thing I love most about this city is the architecture. The architecture transforms an everyday shopping center into a piece of art, into something magnificent. Something that I can, personally, sit and look at for hours. These paintings are depicting some of the gems that I saw each day right outside of my job. The reason I chose these shots were because I wanted it to be relatable in the eyes of a working class person. There's a bus stop with people waiting and no cars in sight. Not to say that working people don't have cars but in certain situations it's cheaper to take public transportation