Charlottesville : The Cityscape of Change

Just north of Lovingston is this gas station where I sometimes visit with a friend for a Latino style breakfast. It is a unique spot, a one of a kind in my experience of gas stations. It is the typical country gas station with the exception that it has a Latino styled restaurant in the back and from the outside look of it nothing else looks quite like it due to its paint job. I really love how it captured my complete attention from the road when I first noticed it driving by on my way to Lovingston. Its bright as all in the sunshine on any typical clear day. When I first saw it I said to myself "I've just got ta paint this place, just for its paint job if nothing else." As so I did. Its raw wood flooring and hand built counters are filled with goods and there is always a friendly smile on the cash registrar attendant's face when you go to checkout. The restaurant in the back is raw too with its indoor picnic tables with plastic place-mats from which to e…

The Ben Franklin was the very best way to spend idle time back in the day. This painting is a tribute to em. One could always find those things that one didn't really need yet had to have none the less. Whenever spotting on I would always ask my Mom to go in and have a look around and lovingly Mom usually did if we had the time. They were great stores for stuff like superballs or balsa wood airplanes that one could snap together in a minute and have fun with for the rest of the day. It could all be had with little cost to one pocket. They were a great idea and there were others like Woolworths and People's Drugs, but this one (Ben Franklins) were my favorite. They are all part of the past now, all have gone under at one time or another. Yes I am waxing the metal of the past some here but if you ever had been in one you too would get a little nostalgic here too. They are something one doesn't get on the internet. One doesn't go skimming across the web loo…

The idea of doing the same object over and over again was something that our art profs had us do during our first years as art students. As you can tell (if you've been following this blog of mine) this is a redone imagery of a street scene in Charlottesville's dinning scene, the Blue Moon Cafe has appeared on my canvases before. The restaurant is one small spot that holds a very dear place in our community of cityfolk. Its gone through its changes, and now they are talking about putting a ten store building crowded around it. What next, put it under glass(?) and sell tickets to the oddity of quaint old haunts of the hippie era(?)a...well this is my painting of the new style of the Blue Moon. It had had a wooden slate roof but all that has changed. I just paint it as I see it. Its a larger painting than my first work similar to this one. This one is about four inches higher and maybe a few inches wider, which gave me more room to move and expand on what I could in…