Three weeks in New York: 2. Bedford Stuveysant and down to Williamsburg: from the street

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Ellery and Broadway (detail)

The grid plans, or almost grid plans are a delight, seguing unpredictably into each other. their occasional monotony affording the possibility of surprise. Magnificent! My happiness was such that even the names of streets, seemed portents of mysterious delight: Myrtle, Dekalb, Quincy, Bushwick...

Marvellous  too are fire escapes,..

Funeral parlour, near Metropolitan Avenue subway, Brooklyn, oil on card, 19 x 18 cm

But after a couple of days the sun came, and indeed it stayed for three weeks, with not a single day of rain.

I adore New York's elevated railways:

Ellery and Broadway, Brooklyn, oil on card, 16 x 18 cm

Broadway, Bedford Stuveysant, oil on card, 15 x 18 cm

I love exploring the Orthodox areas, their strangeness. I am transported to Pi, Aranofsky's marvellous film.

Returning from the Synagogue. Walworth Street, Brooklyn, oil on card, 18 x 15 cm  -sold 

There is some pitting of the surface of this picture (above)

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Sugarhill Social Club and Disco, Brooklyn, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm  - available

Deli, Marcy Avenue, oil on card, 18 x 16 cm



This last is one of the more successful of the bunch, with just the right amount of work. Sickertian, I suppose:

Parade of shops seen from Flushing and Thompkins, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York
 oil on card, 16 x 18 cm   SOLD

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A week in Salvador, part 1: the city

 A stationers, oil on card, 15 x 13.5 cm

A lady being served in a shop, oil on card,  14.5 x 10.5 cm  - available

A little restaurant, oil on card, 14.5 x 18 cm

A view from the market, oil on card, 16 x 17.5 cm

A view of a promontory, oil on card, 13  x 15 cm

An Arch, entrance to a public garden, oil on card, 14 x 17.5 cm  unavailable

                           Rooftops, oil on card,16 x 17.5 cm NOT FOR SALE

Salvador

Salvador is a big city, beautifully located on a series of hills on a peninsula. It is an interesting place and is often melancholy.

This is, in part, is because it is architecturally claustrophobic, often turning away from the sea in a series of small, crooked streets. Many of the shops seem peculiarly small and cramped  too, as if designed for children, with everything sold in comically small quantities.

The city is generally in a state of ruin:  handsome old buildings are falling to pieces; there is vandalism, graffiti, neglect and filth.  Much recent construction is shoddy. I watched workmen construct a brick set pavement: the result was something that will surely become impassable after a day of rain.

 In this mess are beggars begging, children begging, prostitutes offering themselves,  crack users lying asleep on the pavements, and every other example of social degeneracy that you might wish to discover. 

There are also a remarkable number of stray cats: these are considerably more pleasant creatures to have as strays than the dogs that roam other Brazilian cities. Does their presence there in Salvador have something to to with many Salvadorians having Middle eastern heritage?

But the population is majoritively African in racial origin, usually mixed in some way. I found everyone very pleasant. There is a genteel quality to many of even the most banal social exchanges in Brazil, which appear to comment ironically on the crumbling infrastructure ( this serves as a rebuke to those, usually on the left, who believe that poverty somehow necessitates nastiness, as well as pointing a contrast with the people of New York who seem considerably less capable of simple courtesies, despite having far better living conditions). 

 I met some Jehovah`s Witnesses (there is an awful lot of God in Salvador) who were so pleasant and sweet tempered in their little suits and long dresses that I almost took their offer to join them for Bible studies classes seriously. There are also, in touristic places, splendid women wearing  gigantic dresses, so that they resemble huge dolls.

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At first I stayed in Pelhourinho which has a fine concentration of colonial buildings, a well restored enclave.

Then I met a Frenchman called Pierre Pophillat who offered me the use of an apartment in the centre in exchange for a painting, an offer I was happy to accept as my hotel room was noisy at night from the carousing in the street below (making noise is a popular pastime in Brazil generally: Salvador perhaps especially. 

They also like to talk a great deal. Anything can become the subject of an interminable conversation, and if you have nothing new to say, you can simply repeat what you have already said many times over, as it is doubtful that you interlocutor is really listening anyway: this is conversation as a social ritual taken to its logical conclusion: everyone, other than those stupid or unfortunate enough to actually want or need to achieve anything, derives great pleasure from this).

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This first set of three blogger entries shows firstly some of the small shops and buildings in the market, and more general views of or from the city. I feel that I have managed to move up in size. There is a children`s book quality about some, and this derives both from my decisions to use larger brushes, brighter colours, and from a quality of the place itself. And there is a Sickertian quality about the first two, I feel: Sickert is a painter of  claustrophobic sadness.

A week in Salvador, part 1: the city

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 A stationers, oil on card, 15 x 13.5 cm

A little restaurant, oil on card, 14.5 x 18 cm

An Arch, entrance to a public garden, oil on card, 14 x 17.5 cm

                                    

  Rooftops, oil on card,16 x 17.5 cm NOT FOR SALE

Salvador

Salvador is a big city, beautifully located on a series of hills on a peninsula. It is an interesting place and is often melancholy.

This is, in part, is because it is architecturally claustrophobic, often turning away from the sea in a series of small, crooked streets. Many of the shops seem peculiarly small and cramped  too, as if designed for children, with everything sold in comically small quantities.

The city is generally in a state of ruin:  handsome old buildings are falling to pieces; there is vandalism, graffiti, neglect and filth.  Much recent construction is shoddy. I watched workmen construct a brick set pavement: the result was something that will surely become impassable after a day of rain.

 In this mess are beggars begging, children begging, prostitutes offering themselves,  crack users lying asleep on the pavements, and every other example of social degeneracy that you might wish to discover. 

There are also a remarkable number of stray cats: these are considerably more pleasant creatures to have as strays than the dogs that roam other Brazilian cities. Does their presence there in Salvador have something to to with many Salvadorians having Middle eastern heritage?

But the population is majoritively African in racial origin, usually mixed in some way. I found everyone very pleasant. There is a genteel quality to many of even the most banal social exchanges in Brazil, which appear to comment ironically on the crumbling infrastructure ( this serves as a rebuke to those, usually on the left, who believe that poverty somehow necessitates nastiness, as well as pointing a contrast with the people of New York who seem considerably less capable of simple courtesies, despite having far better living conditions). 

 I met some Jehovah`s Witnesses (there is an awful lot of God in Salvador) who were so pleasant and sweet tempered in their little suits and long dresses that I almost took their offer to join them for Bible studies classes seriously. There are also, in touristic places, splendid women wearing  gigantic dresses, so that they resemble huge dolls.

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At first I stayed in Pelhourinho which has a fine concentration of colonial buildings, a well restored enclave.

Then I met a Frenchman called Pierre Pophillat who offered me the use of an apartment in the centre in exchange for a painting, an offer I was happy to accept as my hotel room was noisy at night from the carousing in the street below (making noise is a popular pastime in Brazil generally: Salvador perhaps especially. 

They also like to talk a great deal. Anything can become the subject of an interminable conversation, and if you have nothing new to say, you can simply repeat what you have already said many times over, as it is doubtful that you interlocutor is really listening anyway: this is conversation as a social ritual taken to its logical conclusion: everyone, other than those stupid or unfortunate enough to actually want or need to achieve anything, derives great pleasure from this).

*

This first set of three blogger entries shows firstly some of the small shops and buildings in the market, and more general views of or from the city. I feel that I have managed to move up in size. There is a children`s book quality about some, and this derives both from my decisions to use larger brushes, brighter colours, and from a quality of the place itself. And there is a Sickertian quality about the first two, I feel: Sickert is a painter of  claustrophobic sadness.

Shop window- a homage to William Sickert...or perhaps Edward Hopper..?

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Shop window, oil on card, 14 x 9.5 cm  AVAILABLE

The first of a run of pictures of shop windows: a sort of homage to Sickert, or perhaps Hopper. I'd intended to start this investigation some years ago, but somehow never got onto it.

I'll paint them mostly in the centre of Florianopolis, at the weekends when it's quiet there.

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New paintings, canvas

Two new paintings; their first stages.

I'm continuing to explore tonal painting, with references to Sickert, Hammershoi and Hopper (late Edwardian and Early modern art). I want to continue working on a simple style, very straighforward and uncontroversial, and to continue exploring the changing urban environment near here, and the changing relationships between old and new buildings and nature.

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It's surprising how little aware many oil painters are of the importance of the painting surface, specifically that the sort of acryllic pre-primed canvases, cheaply available in the art shops are massively substandard, and will result in much less sucessful paintings.

This is because of the way these cheap canvases absorb paint, and how they make it hard to paint in glazes. I have resolved to chuck out all the cheaper type cnavases I have, to avoid the temptation to repaint on them, and only to use the better oil primed canvas available from the UK.

Yard

A choice between two images. The former (black and white) is too relentless, as if a specific interpretation of the scene -that it is a depressing place- is the necessary response to it.

I'm happier with the coloured one. Such places are not classically beautiful (classicism = the beauty of order) but they aren't without aesthetic interest or curiosity. I guess they show the private lives of cities. I did not enter the yard and explore it because I saw a policeman there and I didn't want to have to explain myself (actually, the police here are rather laid back and pleasant -at least, in my experience- but nonetheless...).

And I suppose such photos are part of a tradition through Bernd and Hilla Becher and Stephen Shore, to Sickert to Eugene Atget, going back to the Dutch painters of the 17th century. They remain incredibly unpopular with viewers, however, receiving very few "hits".

Two points about the photo:

1. To the right of the white police car is a flatbed truck. Behind the truck is a grey building. This is connected to the fawn building by means of a funny little sloping corridor.

2.If the tree beside the telegraph post is not cut soon, the telegraph post will fall.

3. The picture was taken on a Sunday, which probably explains its peacefulness.