Rooftop Tank in Gowanus - SOLD

Oil on cradled maple panel
12” x 12”
$785 - SOLD

Continuing my series of paintings of old, decrepit buildings in my studio neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn, this one shows a disused tank of some sort atop a generic warehouse or industrial building. There used to be an upper portion of the now-rusty structure, which collapsed around 2000. There are some who believe it was a coffee roasting business, and others who recall that it was a ceramic tile factory. In any case, for several years I’d wanted to paint it because of all the gorgeous colors of the tank-thing.

I happened to be walking by it last autumn and spotted it all lit up by the afternoon’s setting sun, and the view was made even better by the autumnal foliage - the ivy covering the building and the trees in the background added beautifully to the composition.

Here is a detail view:

You can clearly see the brushstrokes in this painting, not only because I loaded up my brushes with more paint, but was experimenting with a new medium, cold wax, which adds substantial body to the oil paint, plus transparency (it’s not as obvious, but there are a few layers of slightly different colors). It really added to the sense of the gritty, run-down state of the structure.