a city of hills
Began my life in a mountain-city in the Philippines, Baguio -- with its steep roads, thoroughfares winding through hills, valleys, ravines; and it looks like I'll be spending the last chapters in a hilly one as well.
About a week ago, on my walk up to the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, I ran into a plen air artist working on a piece, on the corner of Leavenworth and Filbert. Watched him paint for a while, then when he paused struck up a conversation. Friendly and engaging chap; his name Rob Pointon, and was visiting the city from the U.K. specifically to capture San Francisco's legendarily steep roads in a style "exaggerating the gradients, the sweeps and elongating the vertical road in the centre" (from a post in Rob's Instagram).
This was Rob's second time in the city, the first being about 12 years ago, which only whetted his appetite to return and paint it again. "The last time I was there was 12 years ago back in 2013. I'm looking forward to competing with my younger self."
His style is quite alluring, and as I mentioned to the artist, his images feel like the actual memory of a place, such as these steep streets in San Francisco - i.e., when I bring them to mind, I feel the steepness and the gradients... I don't see it. And Rob's oil painting captures that sensation visually; it's rather astonishing, really.
[ Watching Rob work that one midday on Leavenworth and Filbert... ]
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[ The photo below clearly captures both the subject and the object in one frame, which to my mind triggers the question: which feels more real -- the roadway, or the painting of it? ::chuckle:: The actual road is what the eye sees, but Rob's painting is what my mind remembers of it. ]
[ And these following pics are a finished painting of the world-famous portion of Lombard Street with its 8 hairpin turns, between Hyde and Leavenworth, that Rob kindly showed me. Of this painting, he wrote in his Instagram post: "I couldn't come to San Francisco to paint wacky steep streets and not take on Lombard St. ... Probably the most abstract of the compositions from this trip. I was frustrated at how little of the subject you could see from one spot so I decided to move through different vantage points. A bit like a vertical Bayeux Tapestry or Chinese Scroll. Very much influenced by David Hockney and Wayne Thiebaud." ]
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[ And below is the finished painting -- I made a screenshot of Rob's post of it on Instagram, and including the section on the right with my comment on it: ]
