this piece was inspired by driving around the Ghost Town of Philadelphia. These are areas that have either burned down or fallen into such repair that they probably will be torn down eventually but for now they're vast areas where nothing lives except decay. So,I set about painting a sense of of both despair and acceptance. There's something very peaceful about an abandoned area and yet oddly creepy because one wonders exactly what the tipping point was and when. when did a neighborhood that was otherwise perhaps poor and in a bit of disrepair become completely abandoned. How does that take place? Meditating on these thoughts and thinking it over I got out my charcoal and just sketched the idea of a neglected corner. Not a place necessarily specifically but a sense of the feeling of all of these places my sister told me that they were over 129,000 abandoned buildings in greater Philadelphia. That's really hard to imagine I didn't wanna evoke all of the abandoned buildings because I had no idea how. Instead, I just wanted to evoke one of those areas a sense of a neighborhood that was gone. After using charcoal to approxilate sketch, I felt unsatisfied. So I abandoned my wprk on the abandoned theme for several months! Then, I went back few times over the sketch, but ended up erasing it and starting over several times. I arrived at the idea of creating a disappearing horizon line or a simulicrup of a sense of depth of focus. I didn't really wanna make it realistic. Instead, my purpose was to leave it feeling like an offhand piece of creative marginalia, which in a way it was. After toying with the lines, I finally decided it was time to make it happen. More weeks go by. One day, impulsively, I watered down some black and ocher and coppery paint and just sketched in the idea of a bunch of houses. Then, after a while I decided to add something else. I realize that one of the things I kept seeing wherever I went in abandoned neighborhoods there were always piles of tires. And to this day I do not understand where they come from, and how they end up in piles in the middle of the street. I could see them lying around in a dried gooey dried magma volcanic heap of despair, of if the tires had been burned for some kind of protest. Yet, none of these tires were burned and none of them even appeared to be damaged and so that remains the final mystery. I added more layers of paint over the week but decided to keep the peace very, very ephemeral like the odd puzzle. It was enigma of how places go from being alive and vibrant to simply empty.

Artwork Size & Ink Base:

61X122

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Daniel Aaron Schwartz

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