Pyramids of Brooklyn
2008 - 34"x36" Acrylic, colored pencil, charcoal, gold leaf, newspaper, on unstretched canvas.
Finished with two coats of Krylon Kamar Varnish #1312
(Private Collection - New Mexico)

September 2, 2008

There is a larger photo at the bottom of this page, where you can see much better detail.

I often symbolize Brooklyn with pyramids. This started after hearing a number of residents from Manhattan telling me they had never been to Brooklyn, and acting like it was this far away place. If you aren't familiar with the New York City geography, Brooklyn is separated from Manhattan by the East River, so it's really not that far.

The pyramids have recently taken on a more significant meaning. I visited Jean-Michel Basquiat's grave site in the Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn. There are a long list of historic people burried there including Samuel Morse, Leonard Bernstein, and a number of military leaders & politicians. I thought about how the Egyptians built the pyramids as tombs to honor pharoahs. Now when I draw the pyramids in my paintings, I think of all these people who forever changed history.

I started working on this painting in Feb 08' and completed it in May, but then in July I decided it really wasn't finished. I made a few additions, mainly the flying serpent and F-train subway tracks. It's my first large canvas painting, and was a challenge because I'm used to drawing objects on a smaller scale. I ended up using black oil pastel for many of the lines to make them stand out.

To the left of the silver smoke stacks is a Bronx Bomber en route to Boston. The plane was one of the final additions to the painting and I decided to make this a paper collage piece for better contrast. I used an inkjet print of the Enola Gay (the B-29 bomber that dropped a bomb on Hiroshima), and put the Yankees logo on the tail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had a pile of scrap canvas that I found through Craigslist. I took two pieces and glued them together. In the middle of the painting, you will see a horizontal line where I attached the two pieces of canvas together. There are a few staples as well. I have two reasons for using unstretched canvas. It looks more primitive to me. I don't have much room in my apartment for large paintings. Unstretched canvas takes up a lot less space and it's easier to transport on the subway.

The pyramids were made from immitation gold leaf. The gold leaf was too bright and shiny by itself, so I toned it down by adding gold paint along with some charcoal. The canvas is mostly covered with Brooklyn Rail newspaper. I used paint mixed with water, so the newspaper has a wrinkled look, and I also scraped it with a razor blade for a weathered look.

This is a photo of the painting in development: