"Downtown with Whaling Museum"

Oil on Canvas, 24" x 36", 2010 

This piece was created specifically for my exhibit entitled "Atlantic Awe" which is on display at 88 Hatch Street in New Bedford, MA. For five years now I've been participating in the Hatch Street Holiday Sale. 

15 Years ago I was in an art gallery in Hyannis called Artistic Appetites. On view were some paintings of New Bedford that really struck me. I wish that I had learned the name of the artist, I have researched it online a bit but turned up nothing yet. The works were so beautiful. There was the red hues of the lonely factory buildings, the empty streets, the abandoned industrial structures and unused railroad tracks which expressed (almost over-dramatically) but very poignantly the rise and fall of what was once one of the wealthiest cities in the country. These paintings appealed to me on many levels. There was the immediate reaction I had their nuance and content, but next came the catalysis of memory. Walking through the cobblestone streets with my parents as a young boy, I felt as though this particular place had remained untouched somehow by time. Apart from the visceral, violent, and mythical appeal of the compartments I'd found in the halls of The Whaling Museum, I recall the strange nautical articles that confronted me in the stores downtown. There was a huge brass sword hung on the wall in one of the shops that I became obsessed with. It embodied the myths of Lewis Carroll's Vorpal Sword from "The Jabberwocky", as well as the tale of King Arthur's sword in the stone.  I resolved that one day I should have that weapon.

    This has yet come to pass although I do have a small collection of pretty cool other swords.

    I have been back to New Bedford many times since viewing those paintings in an attempt to capture a bit of that magic that I once endured through the art. I have painted on the side of Route 195 West the old antique store which is now gone.

 "Coggeshall Street"

Oil on canvas, 16" x 20", 2008

This scene is one I've wanted to paint since I was a little kid. New Bedford has always been a fascinating place for me with it's nautical history, ethnic diversity, and working class culture. It always seemed to me a place of adventure and danger as well. The scene depicted here to me is an iconic New Bedford shot with the McDonald's tower I've driven by so many times and the giant worn out factory building in the foreground (which has since been torn down). When I set out to paint it I walked around the area for a while trying to figure out how to get the shot without setting up my easle right next to 195 because I didn't want to look like a psycho. But I wound up having to do just that. Luckily, there were no strange incidents other than a painter standing practically in the commuter traffic amid the highway detrius for a few hours.

The above featured painting isn't included in this year's Hatch Street Holiday Sale because I was too busy to travel to Woods Hole to retrieve it from my Pie in the Sky exhibit.

Instead I chose these seven paintings to commemorate the awe (and that's the full, actual proper use of a very beat up word) I feel when I'm in proximity of The Atlantic Ocean

"Atlantic Awe"