Description:

Demolition of Art Studios Building in Tucson, AZ. About 5 stories high, with roughly 100 studios. The image is based on a photo I took of the "Muse Art Center" in Tucson, Arizona during the the week it was being demolished (in 2006). There was such a collision of contractions in this image that I just had to capture it in photograpy and in paint. The trashed studios, the ominous "dead end" sign, the tractor, the perky and pathetic "Muse" sign ("Tucson's Home for the Arts"!) in the foreground, mocking the violence behind it; and the great graffiti on the wall in the background. The graffiti (which is real) was painted with a paint roller by a pissed off artist, presumably a tenant in the Muse studios. The images show a person with a hole in his heart, and a ladder to a star...interrupted by the word "DESTROY": a final artistic act to protest the destruction of an artistic dream. I painted the original of this painting with gouache on a piece of 11" x 14" bristol board.