Design & Execution

  The reference for this piece is a known work of fine art: a photograph by Peter Mitchell, a lorry driver who traversed West Yorkshire and occasionally snapped photos. The piece is titled Eric Massheder, Leeds, (1975) . Eric is the man in the doorway, a drippings refinery worker who posed in his home, adjacent (really, attached) to the refinery where he worked for 12 years. Eric woke up in his home in the morning, walked one room (or so) over, and began his shift. I have changed and omitted a few details for the sake of composition as usual. I've now been working from home for about four years, and I make a similar commute without stepping outdoors. My house even resembles Eric's a bit, though there's no factory nearby. I enter my workplace by transferring a USB cable, which joins all of my input and output devices from my personal computer to my work laptop. I stoop under my desk to make the transfer, so possibly a similar amount of exercise is involved—the digital equiva...

Another rooftop scene washed with black tea, though coffee might been more apt for Paris. I want to celebrate Paris's commitment to corrugated, slate-blue metal roofs, as explored by the titular cat in A Cat in Paris .  I enjoyed painting in darker and lighter tones over the middle tea tint. In past projects I have used Micron fineliners under my wash work because their ink doesn't blur, but I often find their lines too even, which makes the drawing feel contrived, mindlessly consistent in the weight of the line rather than heedful of the weight of the objects. For this project I returned to a college technique of drawing with a sharpened dowel and black ink to create some of the beefier, sketchy lines around the outside of the buildings because I can vary the weight more with pressure. Some details aren't explored with ink to give greater emphasis to others: a tree in the courtyard, smaller buildings in the background.  As I drew, I kept recalling advice about how to defin...