These large paintings of big iron cars of the late 60s and early 70s are somewhat nostalgic. But time and gravity catches up with the sheer bulk of these machines. However, the beauty of these machines is that all parts can be replaced and resurfaced. Anyone with the will and tools can keep these cars running.
Repair is a way of life, but in today's disposable world, it is sadly fading.
Made over a period of seven to ten years, these car paintings reflect the fits, jump starts, and extended stalls of their eveolution. The past is like a vast junk yard, a scrap-heap rich with the memories of people, places, events to be rediscoverd and refitted, modified or customized and made new again. Today's ubiquitous TV commercials project slickly marketed fantasies, odysseys promising adventure, survival, protection, and hot sex. Yet while many of the cars in these paintings are poised for escape, ready totake their drivers to glory or simply some place where trouble doesn't go, other sit abandoned. Some of the landscapes they end up in conjur the settings of Russell Banks or a Cormac McCarthy novel.