Artists have celebrated landscapes since the first chunks of charcoal were rubbed on cave walls. Through history artists have tried, with varying degrees of success, to capture the bucolic and stunning views of nature -- mountains, trees, the sky -- that surround them.
Today, artists are often confronted with a very different kind of landscape, the post-industrial urban landscape of the 21st century. But inspiration remains the same.
In cities like Bridgeport, Connecticut, we are surrounded by the remnants of a once-thriving manufacturing community. All Bridgeporters can resonate in some way to the towering red and white-banded United Illuminating smoke stack, or to the crumbling hulks of once-thriving factory buildings that, in their prime, made Bridgeport one of the Northeast’s greatest industrial cities.
It is easy to vilify the industrial landscape as ugly or depressing, but through the eyes of an artist the sights that are so repellant to some, emerge with hidden, sometimes breathtaking, beauty.
The show features several of my "Steel Mill" paintings.
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