The top and bottom of this painting are the buildings of 9th St. between Avenue A and Avenue B. The sides of this painting are the buildings of St. Marks Pl. between Avenue A and Avenue B.

While I was exact with the scale and dimensions of the streetscape, I took certain liberties with the color and (lack of) perspective. Defying the logic of "bottom is down" and "top is up," the buildings hover in between their recognizable representation and abstraction. By repeating the shapes of the windows in the geometry of the center, the original reading of squares as "windows" becomes suspect. And if the windows aren't windows...

The style of the painting with simplified forms, flattened colors and dark outlines references popular media: print, cartoons, and advertisments. Combined with ecclectic colors, the style serves as a testament to the neighborhood, wild, illogical, and unrefined. I hope that the explosive abstraction in the center of the painting references the East Village as clearly as the buildings. The jumbled grid and pointed colors contain the energy of these streets in a purified form.

The relationship between the buildings and the grid is frame and pane. The buildings connect the grid to reality and force specificity on the abstraction.