A View Of Two Service Stations, an oil painting
on Jan 15 by alinquist55
A cityscape, showing two gas stations, one behind the other, is available through the Fine Art Gallery Of Realism
A VIEW OF TWO SERVICE STATIONS, Canvas size: 24″ x 36″
Looking at the foreground, this cityscape looks like a painting of one gas station but a second one stands behind it in the painting. From the foreground, you can see the medians of grass and landscaping that separate the gas station from the street that is immediately in front of you and runs along the bottom of the painting. A private street light stands to the left and the filling station display sign stands tall on the right. Behind these, on the left side of the painting, are the service station pumps along with a car and a pickup. Behind them is the coming and going of the traffic on the road. Red traffic lights and brake lights glow. Beyond the traffic is the opposing corner from the service station. There, another station in different colors sits along with the houses and the trees. On the horizon, clouds are moving in.
I have painted a number of cityscapes but this one pulls together a number of my recurring subjects, except that I am missing a few loosely painted trees up front. Someone once pointed out that I do not have a lot people in my paintings. That has happened for two reasons: most people drive rather than walk and most collectors of art prefer paintings without people. In this painting, the intersection is busy with cars and these cars represent people in our modern culture. (I was amazed at the number of people who did not stand at their cars to pump their gas either. Almost all of them walked into the station.)
The idea for this painting came from walking out of an art supply shop. From across the parking lot, I could see the juxtaposition of the two stations. Considering the numerous times I had gone in and out of that store and the infinite times I had crossed this intersection, I was surprised to find that this idea had not occurred to me earlier. This was an interesting, complicated view, as I would have to layer one gas station upon another and connect the various pieces of this scene together like a puzzle. I would also have to paint the on going traffic. I knew that this would be a difficult picture to paint but there was really only one thing that frustrated me more than I had expected: the front gas station sign.
Everything in the middle ground came together well and the foreground was handles last. This included the sign. At first, I painted the sign as it was, but I found it drew way too much visual attention to the foreground of the painting and, especially, to the upper right hand corner of the canvas. I wanted the viewer to be drawn into the painting and to be able to view the middle and background with out the visual distraction of a boldly colored box in the upper foreground. So I went through the trouble of toning down the sign and removing its detail.
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