Sometimes I think that buildings and places speak to me because they know I listen.
The Fulton Gas Works has stood empty and gutted for as long as I have been here. (16 years!?) My friend EriK Robson and I would drive by it on our tours of places that make Richmond a city and not just a town. The metal blown out gas storage tank and the cool Art deco building that stands on risers has always seemed sacred in some way. I also knew that it was doomed. There was no possible way a building and structure like this could possibly survive a development onslaught. It isn't historical, there are no famous people related to it, it was just part of the infrastrucure that is no longer needed.
Then, came the ball park.
I finished this painting in January of 2005. I worked on it through the summer. I am not crying "Save the Gasworks!" I know it needs to go sometime. I am just saying, this is a great blues song I think should be heard. I think that is why it spoke to me. It has a song, sad, beautiful, and kinda funky.
Acrylic on Canvas
40" x 50"
$2500
This painting can be seen in real life at
Main Street Centre
600 E. Main St.
1 comment:
Saved again, though. No ball park. Not anything so far, due to the environmental reclamation needed to make the site--and perhaps the buildings--useful after they were used for "coal gassifcation" for most of the 20th century. It closed Nov. 27, 1950.
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