Oil on panel
24.25 x 24 x 2 in
2022
 
This is the first painting I made of the SS United States from a photo taken peering through a chain link fence across a tarmac. I was fascinated by the parabola of rust and the geometry of the scene.
 
At the time, I was doing a lot of volunteering aboard the tallship Gazela, which has a swooping bow like this. In the process of applying paint, I was paying more attention to the painting than the photo, and later realized that I had depicted the shape of the bow entirely inaccurately.
 
The SS United States has a knife-sharp angular bow, so this is only sort of kind of a painting of her. It is a painting about paint and shapes and colors more than it is a painting of a ship.