Today’s watercolor experiment:

Many years ago, shortly after I got my driving license, I took the car into New York City. It was an overstimulating experience, generating a kind of hyper vigilance. As I was making my way through the crowded streets, a man with a red day-glow flag seemed to be waving me to the side. “What did I do wrong?” was my first thought. The only place to pull over was the place to which he directed me: a parking lot. It was then I realized that the man was the same as a carnival barker, trying to attract as many customers as possible to park in his lot. I pinpoint the beginning of my quasi-cynical outlook on life to the moment when I realized the man with the flag was impersonating an authority figure, and I did not have to obey.

During my time living in New York, years after my initial driving experience, I don’t recall seeing these flag-waving parking shills. Perhaps the advent of huge ‘Park Here’ signs eliminated the need.  I came across this parking sign during one of my walks through the city. I was attracted by the scale and redundancy of the signage.

Park Graffiti
6″x4″ 140# Mixed Media Paper

One of my challenges in this study was to find a way to infuse a patina of age in the large yellow signs. I began by laying down bismuth yellow. After that dried, I used a transparent red iron oxide pigment (M. Graham) as a wash. This achieved the desired effect.

The graffiti  in this composition is a literal signature of the period (1990s) when this art form, while still omnipresent, was in decline from its heyday of the 1970s.

Reference photo:

Park Graffiti Reference Photo