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| KC Crossroads 2021 watercolor by Gregory E. Larson |
memoir
by Gregory E. Larson
It was a late Spring
evening on Main Street in the Crossroads District, just south of downtown
Kansas City, Missouri. The pandemic was beginning to wane, but masks were still
required to board the streetcar. I hopped on at Union Station and rode north to
an intersection near a restaurant where I was to meet friends for dinner.
Being a bit early, I
walked around the block to look at new apartments and condo buildings, outdoor
coffee bars and pubs. With a lot of young adults moving into the Crossroads,
there is finally a critical mass of population to create a successful inner
city with a nice mix of businesses.
I stopped at the
restaurant, did not see my friends inside, so I sat at an empty set of tables
on the outside on the Main Street sidewalk. That’s when I noticed the buildings
on the west side of the street. The windows had the most unusual reflections of
some of the colorful new condo buildings just to my east. My fascination grew
intense because each window had a reflection that made it look like an abstract
painting. Each building looked like a wall with a collection of modern art.
And, oh, the bricks had a texture and color worth remembering.
I took some cellphone
photographs and noticed the streetcar coming by, so I took a photo of it. The
reflections from the front of the streetcar were even more abstract.
I thought there might be
a painting in the scene, a collection of abstract pictures within the picture,
so to speak. When I decided to begin the watercolor, my goal was to have the
viewer feel the bricks, not just see them. I want the viewer to feel the
movement of the streetcar and the notice the reflections off the walls and the
windows.
While I worked on the
painting over the course of two weeks,
it made me think of one of my favorite movies: Rear Window by Alfred
Hitchcock. The entire movie took place in an urban courtyard of an apartment
building. Jimmy Stewart was confined to a wheelchair, so he spent most of the
day as a voyeur, watching the comings and goings of the apartment dwellers. He
shared his thoughts with Grace Kelly, who came to see him from time to time,
and she was stressed with his voyeurisms, and couldn’t believe the stories he
shared about what was going on in the other windows of the urban scene. The
buildings never changed but the people dynamics were what made the movie so
interesting. People dynamics – that’s what makes cities interesting. The
buildings just become the backdrop.
If you are an afficionado
of Hitchcock movies, you know that the old man, Alfred himself, finds a cameo
scene somewhere in each movie, on the sidewalks or in the crowds moving about.
In that spirit, I’ve begun to paint myself into different urban scenes, walking
incognito, blending into the surroundings.
I have to confess that
sometimes I dream that I am in a painting, walking around, trying to get a
better look at the surroundings. Sometimes the best real way to do that is to
go back to the location. If that is not possible, I move around on Google
Streetview to inspect details from a different angle. When I finish a painting,
I have a feeling that a little bit of my spirit is left on the spot where the
view takes place.
I almost forgot – the dinner
and conversation with friends that evening was very good. As we left the
restaurant, the city had begun to darken. The windows, the car headlights and
the shops were now the light sources – maybe there’s another painting down the
road, an homage to Edward Hopper and Nighthawks.
Postscript
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| Amelia Earhart Home - Atchison, Kansas 2021 watercolor by Gregory E. Larson Third Place Award |
I recently completed a watercolor of the Amelia Earhart Home in Atchison, Kansas. It was selected to be in the exhibit, Home, at the Buttonwood Art Space. I went down to see the paintings after they were hung. To my surprise, the little Amelia Earhart Home painting has a cameo wall in the lobby at the beginning of the exhibit, which is titled “Home,” and includes approximately 150 paintings from 80 artists. The exhibit ends Sept. 23, 2021.
