Yellowstep (Lexicon)
A luminous grammar emerges from a corner eatery, Queens, New York City. Light pours in, as parts fill up the whole. A single exposure window reflection yields a collage of layer and color.
I am indebted here to modernist touchstones, such as Matisse’s “Bathers by a River” (1909-1917, Art Institute of Chicago), where leaps in temporality and fragmentation inform my own perception. Later, remarkable photorealist painters -- such as Ralph Goings and Richard Estes -- enthrall me with scenes of diners, and a heightened materiality of daily consumption.
It intrigues and inspires me to work “inside out”: to inhabit these paintings’ engagement with the captured moment, then turn back to inflect photographic compositions. Suitably, my favorite Hahnemühle Fine Art paper, Photo Rag Bright White 310, exhibits beautifully both as painterly surface and incandescent reflection.
Still Life: As in, arrangement, table, chair, color, glass, form, shadow, substance.
Motion: As in, walking, eating, chatting, texting, traffic, gesture, community.
Lexicon: The vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge; an inventory. In linguistics: the complete set of meaningful units in a language.
Corona (astronomy): white or colored circle(s) of light seen around a luminous body.
Corona (geography): a neighborhood in the borough of Queens, NYC.