28 Mar abandoned warehouse – a progress report

I was hunting through my hard drive for images that might be a basis for a painting.  I came across this photographic image which I took sometime in February 2013.

An empty building that seems to be slowly falling apart on the main street of Carterton, Wairarapa New Zealand.

The composition did not seem to be suitable for a painting. I got the car out of the shed, and headed to Carterton to take another photograph, actually I decided a single photograph may not cut it. Thinking of Ed Ruscha book “every building on sunset strip” I walked the footpath past the buildings and took several photographs. From these photographs I cobbled together a composite image which I think more ideally represented the building and surroundings plus the experience of actually walking the street.

A photoshop composite of five photographs of a abandoned warehouse in a small town of the Wairarapa district in New Zealand.

This was not an image one can see by standing in one spot across the street, you have to walk past to see this. I wanted to work out a painterly composition so here I used photoshop to make a mock up of what I thought the painting could be.

A colour composition assembled in photoshop.

I am (rather slowly) working my way to making a painting using the above image as a pattern. The painting may be in a flatter style, rather than a photographic look, but I will see how it develops.

painting in progress, acrylic on canvas 920 x 710 mm