'City of Glass 12 - W107St,E69St' 150x120cms

'City of Glass 12 - E107St,W69St'     150 x 120cms

Went deeper & deeper into the painting today and found my answers.  The orange is immense. You might want to play at 'spot the difference' with the painting in last nights blog. 

 

I was painting in my sleep and went into the studio with a bunch of ideas. Firstly, I felt the left side of Manhattan was too soft, not tough enough. The drawing was strengthened by filling, with flatter paint ,the lovely shape of the Hudson River between the left side of Manhattan and the left edge of the canvas. I found a green that set off the orange/reds. A warmer green line was added to the edge, running in parallel to the now straighter line of the West Side and connecting to the vertical drips of the avenues.   I'm still looking for more, for something else- I realised that the grid of Manhattan needed a horizontal or two to break up the verticals so I introduced W107St and E69St, the green lines flanking Central Park and the streets where author/detective Quinn and his client live.

Already, there was a subtle scaling up of the street grid on the right side of the painting, so taking the main horizontal as E69St, I introduced the image of a tiny ziggurat-roofed apartment building, 3 dimensional not flat, so I could repeat the angle of the lower West Side of Manhattan.  The building went in and went out: all the painting needed was the tiny angle.