Paris
Originals | Paris | Squares-Maps
Original – My Private Collection
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In the spring of 2012 I painted a piece I called “Blossoms Squared” where I superimposed a grid over a reference photo and painted it one square at a time. This triggered a stream of ideas. I thought about simply rotating the grid so the squares were on the diagonal, but also thought about other “screens” through which to create an image and started seeing them everywhere: a brick wall, detailed scrolled ironwork… But then, I thought about maps. I love maps! One that I know well and is very close to my heart is the street map of Paris. Thus emerged the seed for this painting.
These flowers were in a florist’s sidewalk display on rue Monge in the 5th in Paris – not far from my apartment when I spent half a year there in 1996.
Setting it up was a challenge which took some technical skills to pull off. If I simply enlarged a street map of Paris, the width of the streets would be so large that they’d obscure too much of the flowers. Using my projector and Photoshop, I was able to create a workable “screen” out of the map. In order to have a the right level of detail, I ended up including only the very center of Paris (not even the Eiffel Tower made it in) to superimpose over the image of the flowers.
This is an entirely different way to think and paint. I had to find the image within each of the shapes on the map. It was interesting to watch myself switching back and forth between concentrating on the image of the flowers and noticing where I was in the city, while either remembering when I’ve been in that spot or wondering what is there on that stretch of street – apartments, restaurants, bookstores? Even without the street names, I still recognize a remarkable number of streets and bridges.
I wonder if I’d painted this image as I normally do, from a contour drawing, if it would be as interesting.
I’m so grateful for the creative spark to explore ideas like this. Now which map/image combo is next?
I tossed around myself and talked about possible names several times with others. More involved names seemed forced, so I decided to keep this painting’s name super simple. This is Paris.
May – June 2013 – 29″x29″ – Watercolor on paper
