I moved to Philadelphia from Knoxville, Tennessee just over three years ago. The first thing that shocked and surprised me was just how rundown the city seemed. Driving around I was startled by all the potholes everywhere I went. I felt my car was just gonna vanish into a chasm. Once I got over my fear of navigating just about anywhere. I was amazed by something else. While I was driving every day to visit my mom in assisted living in Montgomery County, I passed several unusual neighborhoods. These areas were completely abandoned or almost completely abandoned. All of the buildings and houses had boarded up windows. Occasionally, one of the houses wouldn't have a boarded up window and would look almost normal except for all of the detritus and despair surrounding it. This amazed me it was both eerie, a little frightening and also fascinating. One day riding down one of these little abandoned streets. I saw a little girl on a tricycle. I couldn't believe she was here. The street was completely abandoned, but there she was cycling away. She seemed completely oblivious to her surroundings and the obvious neglect of the neighborhood new sentence I actually wondered for a moment where her parents were, but then I thought well she seems well taken care of and well dressed. It's really not something I should get involved with should I When I said about painting that street and the viewing of that street and that moment I didn't really want to be exact in my thinking or in my expression what I wanted to do was to express a sense of what it felt like of what the experience was like the monochromatic colors, the dusty woebegone air of the street. The wistfulness of the whole scene, the sadness of it all. And yet not so sad. The little girl didn't seem deterred or upset or preoccupied at all. She was just enjoying a ride on her tricycle. So I started out sketching in charcoal approximately how I remembered the street I really didn't wanna get into too much detail frankly because I couldn't remember that much but also because I wanted to keep the whole peace feeling very honest and simple. So I sketched in charcoal and then decided enough with the sketching. Next, I got out some color and casually mixed it up. It wasn't really watercolor, though I described it as such it was mostly acrylic but I watered it down so much so that it would have a quality of watercolor. I added a layer of light paint and then I went away and let it dry. I came back a few days later and added another layer of pain and then another and then when I got bored or frustrated, I would use my fingernails to scratch out sections that didn't look quite right that didn't look quite like anything. Eventually, I started to actually see that it was kind of a scene. A vaccine perhaps I'm not very well developed scene perhaps but certainly it captured the way I felt this wasn't neglected nook. I didn't wanna overwork the piece or try to make it particularly realistic and so after stealing it with acrylic paint sealant, I let it go. Next a little bit of gel media sealant, and then I touched up the painting and added more fingernail scratches to take out sections that weren't particularly adding to it or feeling convincing. I really didn't consider the painting finished, but I put it aside. A year later I looked at the painting and it did feel complete in its own way so I touched it up a little and it's done. What do you think of it?

Artwork Size & Ink Base:

61x122

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Daniel Aaron Schwartz

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