Outpost, painting in tribute to the third centennial commemoration of the capital city of Albany, New York, 48in. x 72in., oil on canvas, c. 1986.
At the start of a budding career in visual art, this series of creative works constituted my first in-depth study of a subject---The Pastures.
In the southeast corner of Albany, NY is a collection of early Dutch-Holland brick buildings referred to as The Pastures---originally land cleared for cattle during the period of the first European settlers. Eventually the area transformed into more than a dozen city blocks . . . only to be gradually ignored by the surrounding municipality. By the time I arrived on the scene, the quality of abandonment, which on the surface appeared mysterious or sometimes threatening, I found to be graphic and entrancing---inciting behavior entrusted to artmaking. The visual attraction to such an impoverished urban condition of The Pastures would be captured through many drawings and watercolors produced over two years on site.
