“Chicago City Love”, Metropolitan Series, EXTRA Series, No. XX

Chicago does have soul. Chicago does have city love.

Im here tonight in the city. I left the warm thickening Pacific air of my Los Angeles apartment at 4:30am to catch the red eye to this Mid Western metropolis. Im sitting here in this makeshift office in my hotel writing. My brain is operating at 25%, my eyes are red with no sleep, I can barely utter a sentence from my mouth, but my heart is spinning upside down, and my soul is head over heels in love with this city. And I suppose thats all it takes to make a writer write or a painter paint.. that.. strange word of mouth scrambled egg harvest of words that spit from brain to fingertip to make monuments of movements real.

My last stay here which was roughly a month ago, brought up so many memories of when I previously stayed here in early 2000 era. My head was like this junkman, opening old treasure troves of long forgotten flotsam and jetsam dreams. I was starting on this Mickey piece, but I wanted this to be more a part of me. I couldn’t use a ruler to make the letters, I wanted my hand to guide me, because I wanted this piece to really come from my body. Technically this piece is no. 25 and the original first piece to the destination series.

Streets are what make a city, literally and figuratively. They are the crust to the bubbling urban pie. These streets define the city itself. Like Piedmont and Peachtree of Atlanta, Pike and Pine of Seattle, Van Ness and Mission of San Francisco, or Hollywood and Sunset Blvd of Los Angeles. These names harvest a trigger that unlock memories of our beloved city. In this piece, entitled “Chicago City Love” I went with a spastic sporadic pattern alternating in between the first two colors I ever worked with PO20 LCadOr and PB29 UltBl, which are an homage to my beginnings as an artist exploring color theory. This tied to my endless exploring of this city came to fruition the paralleled idea that:

Wandering around the city is much like experimenting with color, you may get lost, but thats the point. Getting lost provides you with twists and turns of places you would have never seen before if you knew where you were going. Its the same thing with painting, getting lost in the experiment provides you with parallel twists and turns of techniques and aesthetics you would have never thought about if you hadn’t tried. These colors and street names on this painting are about the fundamental skeleton of Chicago, the love that this magnetic city provides, and the beautiful process of being lost and then found.