landscape
TINY PLEIN AIR, WRIT LARGE
The street art festival is my favorite event in Richmond hands down. I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to paint in such an iconic place with so many iconic artists! This one is open to your interpretation, and I'd love to hear your take on it, or just hear you take a big breath ;)
Thanks to my wall neighbors Chris Visions and Sean McClintock and to my whole famdamly for showing up to say hi. Also big thanks to Zammuto for writing a song that kept me company and helped me and my friends laugh during some of the most baffling moments of 2020. It Can Feel So Good is a banger forever.
The fire is from a photograph of a wildfire that started in a national park in Tennessee near Chattanooga and Dollywood in 2016, and was the most fatal fire on this side of the country.
An unconventional portrait of Richmond, viewed from within. Painted in a historic residence, built 1892.
Outside of Washington DC, “the majority of the world’s internet traffic passes through the town of Ashburn in Loudoun County, Virginia, home to one of the world's major internet exchanges.” Meta née Facebook built a data center there in 2019. 90% of the building is for the electronics, and in the last 10% they did a lot to make the meatspace pleasant for their employees.
In such a digital environment, an injection of the natural world acts as an agent of balance. This design is collaged together from my gouache paintings of many places I've been, put through the filter of my eyes and brain and hands and paint and paper and computer and projector and eyes and brain and hands and friend and paint again. Smooshed.
Kosovo is a young country with a long history, and its identity is in the hands of today's young people.
The locations depicted are scenes from my introduction to Ferizaj, where the city streets are busy and close, and the consistent background of the mountains is revealed between buildings. The blank wall at the center is a message of possibility to the students in the university who will see this in class.
This is the first indoor wall to be part of this program, located at the University of Applied Sciences in Ferizaj. I was blown away by the amazing program of MuralFest Kosova and how much this team has positively impacted their city, not just during a summer art festival but year-round, for seven years. My hope is that this mural can symbolize the impact they have had, and hold it up as an example for how to involve oneself in the work being done to build the future of your home.