Equipped with a camera for gathering on-location impressions, and ensconced in a leased studio in industrial Long Island City, he began to incubate ideas for his vivid, relentlessly energetic urban paintings. After a brief return to San Jose, California, in the early 1990s, Christopher returned to settle in New York a few years later. Last Clock on Fifth Avenue compresses all of Christopher's painterly concerns with the contemporary cityscape into a single tableau, its title paying tribute to a holdover from New York's timekeeping past. Tilted in a perspective that has been termed hallucinogenic, the clock cues viewers to the playful qualities, ranging from subtle to exultant, that are a hallmark of Christopher's street scenes.
Buildings bend inward or jut out from New York's methodical grid in slightly odd angles.
Generic pedestrians bob along brightly lit sidewalks and weave past disembodied shadows, never quite certain about risks ahead in the oncoming crowds or in the city's volatile asphalt zones, where stoplights are cautionary at best. The blinding floodlight of a fall mid-afternoon seems palpable, heightened by Christopher's intentional useof his white primed canvas, intensifying the sensation of brightness while creating a shifting dialogue between positive and negative shapes along Fifth Avenue's diagonal swath. His palette is also deceptive. The end effect is of a city never fixed, containing a stunning visuality and dissonance that often compromise the act of reading its specific messages. Pencil lines, appearing as frenetic scribbles on the canvas surface between and underneath Christopher's broad, active brushwork, indicate the narrative possibilities constantly developing, if never fully realized, on New York's streets.