Sketchbook pages 10/19/16

I biked out to the bike trail, which is built on an old railroad line, including a gorgeous truss bridge (a lattice truss, to be precise) spanning the Connecticut River. I rode over the bridge, then pedaled down to a dock on the river to paint the bridge from below. The bridge is somewhat tricky to draw, because although at first glance one would assume that the cross beams would be orthogonal to the sides, they are not, which means that if you draw it right, the perspective looks wrong. I was mostly interested in getting the play of light on the complex nineteenth century ironwork, foliage and river reflections.

Painting in Amherst Historical Society show

I entered a painting in a juried show at the town Historical Society and it won first place!

http://amhersthistory.org/moving-day/

I did the painting many years ago in 1989, and had it in a couple of group shows in Boston back then. It had languished in my basement ever since until the announced theme of the show, "moving in, moving out, moving on" reminded me of it.
It was inspired by the inevitable scene at rush hour in Boston's Park Street station as people trying to get off the antiquated streetcars would have to fight through the mob of blockheads pushing to get on, who seemed unable to grasp the concept that the emptying must precede the filling. It struck me as having larger resonances with the human condition - our societal battles between enlightenment and atavism, and our individual struggles to emerge into the light in the face of our own selfishness and ignorance.