Artist Statement
My recent paintings are romantic scenes of urban highway infrastructure: roads, vehicles, overpasses, and bridges. Painterly, ambiguous, and dark, they are a very personal view of a mundane subject.
My interest in this series continues partly because of my strongly conflicting feelings about the world of driving and roads. One the one hand, it's a dark subject, with implications of menace and decay - for environmental reasons and simply because of the ugliness, danger, and noise.
On the other hand, highways are dramatic and often beautiful. I like the strong curving lines of roads and bridges, and their enormous scale, and the shininess of cars. I like skies and outdoor light, especially in the dramatic, slanting light of sunny winter days or sunset. And beyond the simply visual elements, there is a sense of speed, distance, and escape – the pleasure most of us take in being in a moving vehicle.
It is possible that the day of the automobile and the many structures that support it is coming to an end. In that light I see these paintings as an elegy for the present and the recent past, conveying my fear for the future and an ambient sense of doom.
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