Charlottesville : The Cityscape of Change

Front Street in Lovingston is a smaller almost deserted community on the main highway north and south down the middle of Central Virginia. There is no reason why these streets aught to be without many people taking a stroll or riding bicycles except there just isn't that much business going on. So its like that in Lovingston, and that leaves me plenty of undisturbed time to paint the scenes and buildings in this little town. It has some buildings that were once stores that now sit in need of repair, such is this building which was not so long ago a Drugstore. Its in a prime location right in front of the County Courthouse and other Nelson County government buildings which are active. But still with all that said, there still aren't that many people around on foot. At least that I noticed in the few hours I've spent drawing and photographing its buildings, I wish I could say different but the few signs of life I saw were all inside a metal and plastic bubble called …

Drawing from the mind alone can be both revealing, and bring out some hidden surprises which no one would expect to see. I begin with a simple figure or object then add whatever comes to mind beside it, then onto the next mental echo transcribed into liner form. Its really just me having fun. Many of my longtime artistic admirers see these as some of my best work. I myself see them as an unwinding from the riggers of rendering a landscape or some other more stringent artform. This particular work is in the mindset of a New Yorker magazine artist who often used rubber stamps that he made himself to create and image of ink figures in a setting. This artist was Saul Steinberg He was an enjoyable influence upon me as a young art student living in Philadelphia. Not that I often saw his artwork or read the New Yorker but ever so often I would run into an exhibit of some of his art in a gallery show or a museum would be featuring his penwork, I took a great liking to his style how…