Landscape of Virginia

Charlottesville's skyline is changing and in as much so are the businesses that have been here for a long time. As long as I have been here. These are paintings of some of those businesses that have been the staple for so many years I can count them..(because if I did they would only be for the time (34yrs) I spent in this little college town)....but I need not. As an artist, I am interested in reflecting the society around me. That while those old adages: Am I a product of my environment or my inner self? Or both? And if so how much? And the view of artist is ever so sliding from one side of this quandary to the other: "Are we not but windows of our society reflecting what we see day in and day out?" So with all this in mind, I am on a quest to paint those Charlottesvillle places that served both the town's folk and the student population of our small village before they are flattened by the ever fast wreckingball for new diggs like the many new hotels are...

I always thought as politics as a function of us as a society to help us to help each other with our common elements. Those being what we live in common with, besides the obvious I would say things like food, shelter, transportation and education would be among those common needs. I drew this as a hopeful idea that if one person came upon another that he would reach out and help the other up off the ground. Of course its obvious that this doesn't happen as a usual event in the cities I've been in. I've seen a man face down on the sidewalk being walked around with not one person stopping to see what was wrong. I am thinking that this aught not be the case with the city I spend my days in, in fact once I was that person on the street who needed help while I lay their bleeding from a gunshot wound. I was helped. My life was saved from bleeding out by those heroes of the Rescue Squad who quickly got me into an operating room to take the slug out from my head. My hea...

As the days roll by I sometimes see a time when I feel 'hey its all worth it' and perhaps that epitome shows up in my drawing. It could be the subject of a painting or an idea that can be followed up upon at a later time. That is one reason painters often go back to the source and draw. It makes for a great proving ground for work that might be better explored on larger scale. Such is this drawing I did a few days ago.