Recent Paintings: Earth, Wind and Fire

Earth, Wind and Fire: WIND (2004)                          Earth, Wind and Fire: FIRE  (2004)

Based on a series of aerial photographs of wind farms in the western US, these two paintings are part of a triptych.  The third, EARTH, remains to be completed.

Recent Paintings - Smoke, Steam, Speed

I am starting the New Year with a series of posts on some of my more recent paintings - at least since 2000

Smoke, Steam, Speed  (2010)

with apologies to JMW Turner, one of my heroes

JMW Turner:  Rain, Steam and Speed  1844

My Black Period

 

    

Black Grid One                          Black Grid Two

For this post I go back in time to 1972, when I was associated with a craft community in southwest England.

Recently extracted from my archive and rephotographed, these related paintings form a triptych.  There is a third canvas, if I can locate it !

Abandoned Structures: Drained Pool 1977

Drained Pool 1977

From my earlier Lines & Tracks series, this painting can also be categorized under the more recent heading of Abandoned Structures.

Abandoned Structures: Presidio

Presidio (2006)

The Presidio, or fort, was the earliest Spanish structure built in Santa Barbara, founded in 1782. It was the last of four presidios erected in California designed to establish Spanish claims to the region.  Over time the fort was abandoned, the walls demolished and the site overbuilt by the city, with only two of the original adobe buildings surviving.

Starting in the 1960s the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation  embarked on a projects to restore as much of the original Presidio as possible.  Work has proceeded since, restoring and rebuilding many of the original structures notably  the chapel and many of the buildings on its northern side including sections of the defense walls

The most recent project has been to rebuild the north west corner to include the 10 foot high adobe wall. New concrete columns, as portrayed in my painting, are now in place to secure the wall, part of which has already been completed using adobe bricks made on site by volunteers. This reconstruction effort is a hopeful sign that society can stay the wholesale destruction of historic sites and structures.

In this painting I attempt to capture the dynamic process of restoration and rebirth, with lengths of steel rebar reaching out from the newly emerging concrete pillar as if to embrace the adobe walls to come.

Abandoned Structures: Bird Island

Bird Island (2005)

In October 2005, an old oil pier built in the 1930s and later stripped of its platform lay abandoned off the California coast near Santa Barbara, home only to seabirds.

Considered a hazardous eyesore, it was decided to demolish what was thought to be a dangerously decrepit structure. 

Bird Island, as it was dubbed, had other ideas. After repeated explosive attempts to topple the concrete caissons failed, heavy duty barges were eventually called in to pull them down.

Even the works of man, it seems, can defy man's efforts to destroy them.

In this painting I portrayed the intermediate stage of the structure between dismantling and total demolition, but in a setting amid calm waters that hints at the eventual rebirth of this industrial relic as a nature preserve.

Today, four large thin columns project from the water in a line just offshore that echoes the original structure. Each one has three triangular platforms pointing in a different direction and at a slightly different height—ideal for pelicans, cormorants and other sea birds looking for a place to rest or build a nest. 

Bird Island today (photo © Callie Bowdish)

Abandoned Structures: Etna

Etna 2004

In 2002 the hyperactive volcano Mount Etna, on the east coast of Sicily once again erupted, throwing up a huge ash column and sending lava flows down toward the city of Messina.

Although the threatened city was spared on this occasion, the cable car erected on the side of the mountain to transport visitors to the upper slopes was heavily damaged and later abandoned, leaving only the skeletal remains of its supporting stanchions—the works of man once again destroyed by the awesome forces of nature.

This painting shows the structure silhouetted against a stylized landscape.

images © Richard D. Perry. All rights reserved