Imagine
2007 - 33"x16.5"x0.75" Acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal, newspaper on found plywood.
Finished with two coats of Krylon Matte Finish #1311
(Private Collection - New York)

This is my deranged version of landscape art. Wolf Kahn would probably be horrified to know I consider him my only artistic inspiration for landscape art.

There are a few pieces of newspaper glued to the wood. I used a razor to scrape away some of the paint and expose the newspaper. You can see this looking at the photos below. This was inspired by the poster advertisements I see in the subways that have graffiti written and scratched into them, and are partially torn down. The animals are also etched into the painting with a razor blade.

In the top right photo below, you can see the faint image of the barn. This is a great example of how images in my paintings are created. I don't see them in my head, I see them within the painting.

Above the yellow barn, is Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge, and a pyramid. The pyramid symbolizes Brooklyn and how it is sometimes seen by Mahnattanites as being a world away. The blue lollipop tree, which was eventually painted over, was drawn in with a pencil and circle template. I later etched pi=3.141592654 above the green lollipop tree. In college, I used pi so many times, that I had it memorized to 9 decimal places. Although I have not used pi on a regular basis for 12+ years, the number seems to be permanantly embedded in my memory. The yellow barn seemed too plain, so the final addition to the painting was some scribbling/graffiti on the side of the barn with charcoal.

The title has two unrelated sources of inspiration:
1. While this painting was being made, I visited Strawberry Fields in Central Park, where there is a mosaic that says "Imagine" in the middle. It's a tribute to John Lennon.

2. I have never been to upstate New York, but sometimes try to imagine what it would look and feel like to be there.