Paintings
“Emerging Lights”, 90" x 90", oil on canvas, 2023, NYC.
"Emerging Lights” offers the viewer a privileged view of midtown Manhattan looking south. The sun has just set over the Hudson River and the city lights are emerging from the darkness, a marvel to behold. A blue moonlight illuminates the checkerboard matrix of rooftops, cascading down the wall of skyscrapers. Each rooftop, a heavenly sanctuary few ever see. 5th Ave, is ablaze cutting a diagonal through the concrete jungle. This monolithic tsunami is at once a cold and impenetrable fortress, a bustling beehive of commerce, a quantum field of possibilities and a breathtaking sight, somehow humanized by countless windows that bring warmth and scale to it. We can imagine a person within each glowing window. A question arises: what is you, the viewer”s relationship to this city , to any city ? Do you define yourself by the terms that run this machine ? Do you know who you are in relationship to it ? Are you part of the machine or the one flying overhead, free as a bird?
Loose , imperfect brush strokes deliberately defy the perfection and architectural precision of steel , glass and concrete. Up close, blobs of paint lose their meaning. Energetic brush strokes and soft blurry edges evoke the movement that animates this place. Do you want them to be more defined or are you o.k with some ambiguity? From a distance all these marks coalesce to form a view we all recognize - a mass of buildings thrusting their way into the sky, some rising out of darkness and others lit from below.
The perspective has been skewed, warped a bit, like a curving planet or fish bowl. This is after all the center of the world, full of movers and shakers. In response to enormous unseen forces within , the buildings tilt slightly at the edges, perhaps messing with your sense of balance a bit. Messing with your identity, your values or perhaps not. Are you the fish in the fishbowl or the one standing outside ? Do you want to retreat to the countryside or are you energized, and ready to dive right in ?
“Smoke Break”, 90”x90”, oil on canvas, Los Angeles, 2021.
Description
Since the countryside and city around L.A are interwoven, any description of Los Angeles must, to some degree cover both. The population density around the metropolitan area varies greatly, from as low as one person per square mile in the hilly and mountainous areas to as high as 50,000 per square mile in the downtown area.
“ Smoke Break “ at once explores this stark contrast from a vantage point in the mountains while celebrating the city’s monumental architecture in all its modern splendour. Although one can imagine the sounds of the city, from this removed viewpoint nature reasserts it’s influence casting a peaceful silence over the landscape.
A string of luxurious homes line a ridge in the foreground affording the viewer a glimpse into the lives of those who have either climbed their way to the top or inherited their privileged perch. The homes crown the steep ridge densely encrusted with a floral cornucopia of cacti, palms, agave and innumerable blossoming botanicals.
The observant viewer, initially struck by the breathtaking scene apparently devoid of the humans, discovers, upon closer inspection, a lone person catching the light, leaning on the railing of a long balcony , having emerged from a deeply shaded bungalow to have an existential moment on their smoke break. Free from the daily dross of a plebeian existence, the smoker is not quite free of the trappings of modernity.
As with all things depending on one’s view - of modern living, economic class and relationship to nature, this scene is open to multiple interpretations. The title of this painting also makes reference to Los Angeles’ air quality. Much like an artist who steps back from their work to gain a new perspective, the distance afforded the viewer ( and the person on the balcony ) yields a fresh and clear perspective. Notably the person on the balcony is facing away from the city - a reference to the simultaneous attraction and repulsion the city evokes.
The inhabitants of the ridge, have chosen to live a safe distance from the city, close enough to enjoy the spectacle and to conveniently participate whenever they wish while retreating to their peaceful sanctuaries as need be.
The monochromatic palette was chosen to underscore the timeless quality, and the peaceful stillness of the scene and symbolizes the often polarized contrasts common to dense urban living.
“The Thrill of the Night”, 90” x 90”, oil on canvas, Los Angeles, 2021.
Description
Driving into L.A at night one is caught up in the inescapable rush of a massive momentum, like the river wild, our incessant stream of consciousness, or a main artery funneling lifeblood into the heart of the city. L.A pulses with energy and light. Whizzing through the city limits at times elevated, one may catch glimpses of suburban life below. Countless rows of street lights stand, unnaturally still casting cones of light affording safe passage, glowing pockets of stillness, eddies in the stream, where energy swirls around at a slower pace in late night diners and gas stations, until it gets sucked back into the mad rush.
Millions of tiny lights, dance with the darkness, coalescing as the density increases and skyscrapers pierce the heavens, their seismographic signature a tour de force of the will to power. Neon signs atop hotels, civic centres, landscaping lights illuminating majestic palms from below along fashion filled boulevards. Each light is a home, a business, a sign, a warning, a signal to go, a monumental construct or a parking garage. All is flickering, glowing and beconning, promising delight, while the incessant stream of traffic smears across the canvas, a neon blur. All boundaries are blurred in this city.
Like the cosmos above each node in the city’s fabric seems to be a separate star, but all is interconnected and plugged into unseen the quantum field of possibilities. Anything is possible here, fusion reactions, black holes and super novas. The law of attraction reigns supreme in this magnificent maelstrom of the man made. Be a star, enjoy their light or take cover in the shadows and the thrill of the night.
“Self Portrait Anonymous”, 90” x 90”, oil on Canvas, Toronto, 2020.
Description
Toronto has grown at a furious pace this past decade. At one point it was the largest construction site in North America. Despite this growth, it’s commercial core remains juxtaposed with surrounding pockets of residential neighbourhoods, some of which are filled with trees creating spectacular contrasting views, a reminder of a bygone era, that is rapidly disappearing.
Painted during the golden, ( sunset ) hour, every day in August, of 2020, from the artists studio on the 11th floor of a residential tower, “Self Portrait Anonymous” depicts the view of Toronto’s skyline juxtaposed with the tree laden neighbourhood of Casa Loma to the north of the city. A cloudless sky yields to the magnificent serrated skyline, steel and glass, gleaming golden as they catch the last rays of the sun. The shadows of two high rise apartment buildings stretch across the landscape over Well’s Hill Park” parted by a single sliver of light, like a leak in a great dam, bursting forth and illuminating an intersection with a lone pedestrian who pauses to look up.
While celebrating a breathtaking view, “Self Portrait Anonymous”, simultaneously explores the feelings we have all felt within a dense urban environment, punctuated by moments of peace and solitude. These feelings are often heightened when we rarely find ourselves alone on a residential street in a pocket of quietude, or perched high up in the sky on a balcony. Trees buffer the sounds of the city, and for a brief moment we experience a relative silence: a magical sanctuary, the relentless pace of life in the city grinds to a halt and for an instant we are present, not defining ourselves by the past or chasing something in the future but free from the slavery of time, firmly grounded in the present. Such a moment is best depicted and annotated, historically, monochromatically, as if frozen in time. For some, this feeling of aloneness exacerbates the paradox of modern living, for others it’s a welcome escape and respite, not a feeling of separation but one of a deeper connectedness.
By titling his painting “ Self Portrait Anonymous” Martin Russocki challenges us to reconsider what we identify with: when viewed from this perspective are we not all anonymous ? How does it make you, the viewer feel to be alone and anonymous in a metropolis
“Anything Goes”, 48” x 60”, acrylic on canvas, Central Park, N.Y.C, 2017.
Description
In this painting, Sheeps Meadow , Central Park acts as a metaphor for the arena of life which occurs to each of us differently.. to some as a blank slate where the freedom of self expression in unconstrained, to others perhaps more restricted. The painting is also an observation and commentary on social dynamics and decorum in public spaces. Some of the figures feel free to fully express themselves by taking off their clothes and dancing, while others stand around observing and perhaps judging or wishing to participate... The sky , buildings and trees are painted with a celebratory exuberance which underscores the freedom to be an do as we please.
“Blown Away”. 37” x 63”, acrylic and oil on corrugated metal, Q/R trains, 34th st. subway platform, N.Y.C, 2022. Diptych: painted on 2 sides of the same panel.
Description
A man is both literally and figuratively blown away by the sight of a beautiful woman on the opposing subway platform. As two trains approach, about to eclipse the view they have of each other, his knees buckle under the double impact of both the magnetic attraction he feels for her and the gust of wind preceding the massive train. Like a deer caught in headlights, he’s paralyzed, unable to do anything, knowing that when the trains pull away, he and the woman will both be gone.
“Blown Away” explores the chance encounters we all have with passersby when in transit.
I chose the corrugated metal to paint on because I feel that it helps to simultaneously express both the energy of the train and the emotion of the moment, as well as the buckling action of the man's knees. The metal is also reminiscent of the stainless steel cladding of the train. It's horizontal orientation helps to underscore the tremendous speed with which life moves in dense urban environments such as NYC. Ironically the millisecond the the subjects have to process and react to each other is frozen in this painting forever.
“Blown Away”, 37”x 60”, acrylic and oil on corrugated metal, Q/R trains, 34th st. subway platform, N.Y.C, 2022. Diptych: painted on 2 sides of the same panel.