The sustainable painting series is an expansion upon the nine paintings I made while living on a sustainable farm in Morocco. The paintings, made from observation, depict portraits and landscapes from the farm. Once I returned to Queens, NY, I built custom frames and stands for each painting. The frames are made from recycled lumber and use a puzzle pieced joinery to assemble the forms. The paintings, on un-stretched canvas, are stretched onto the frames and held in place with clothespins that are mounted to the face of the frame along its perimeter.
With my friend Craig Scheihing, photographer and filmmaker, we documented the front and back of each frame and painting in specific locations around New York City and Philadelphia. The paintings were brought to industrially ravaged landscapes that in their past, were a part of a healthy and vibrant ecosystem. The juxtaposition of the painting’s compositions, with their photographed backgrounds is part of a larger conversation of the impacts of capitalism and colonialism on the environment, and the sustainability of the economic system and life on this planet.
Craig also took double exposure photos (shown in the gallery below) composed of the front and the back of the paintings and their frames layered in single photogrpahs. The results are phenomenal. This project is still in progress.
Locations for the pictures below are Calvert Vaux Park in Graves End, Brooklyn; Smiling Hoggshead Ranch, Hunts Point Queens, and abandoned lots in Brewerytown, Philadelphia.
