Well it's been a few years...
No, I'm not referring to when I last posted on this blog, even if it may be close to being true...
Today, Thanksgiving actually, I will share a project from more than a dozen years ago. When I was living in San Francisco. I had the opportunity of painting a mural on the side of a building on the bottom of Potrero Hill. It had the unique placement of being at the corner of 8th street and 16th street.
At the time this building was the showroom of Alexander Baughn. Housing beautiful furniture designed by Peter Alexander and David Baughn.
I painted this over a holiday weekend, Memorial Day I think. It actually took me 4 days, a day longer than I had originally predicted, due to a little misfortune caused by the need of the sissor-lift to be recharged over night. I left half of a chicken sandwich in the refrigerator of David's studio overnight not knowing that he unplugged the fridge to charge the lift. After the consumption of the sandwich it was much more difficult to focus on painting, actually the movement of the lift was the worst part. It was fortunate that the top of the building was completed before the effects of food poisoning set in.
The architecture of the building as well as the preexisting signage influenced the layout of my painting. The division of space allowed me to juxtapose the springtime California landscape with it's hills of poppies and lupins a more dramatic close up of the flowers. I like a change of perspective in a painting and this building gave me the opportunity to zoom in on the foreground. The chaos if the adjacent lot where building supplies were stored also influenced the choice of the larger scale for the bottom.
This 9"x12" oil painting of the building after the mural was done is my keepsake of that time. I may have wanted to savor the memory of Peter's old Mercedes as much of as the painting on the side of the building.
The building has new tenants and the painting is no longer there.
