“Fire Station” Chuck Middlekauff

“Fire Station”

I love photographing and painting it because of its shapes, colors, and textures, and because of the ongoing patina from 70-plus years of sunshine and storms. I don’t paint it for historical documentation but because of its nostalgic, iconic American character, truly a work of art…sort of a sculpture. And I don’t paint a replica of it but use artistic license to embellish it.

One of my concepts for the past few years has been to make a “painting of a painting in progress.” My art tools tended to accumulate on my “masterpiece” as I worked, and I found this very interesting and appealing, so I started painting them into my paintings. I also noticed that the canvas, and my hands and shirt, got pretty messy from the accidental drips, drops, splats, and smearing of the watercolors or acrylics as I worked. I also liked those. So I added them to my paintings, too.

Anyway, my working methods have produced paintings that incorporate and exaggerate my painting process. And my style has evolved into a mixture of chaos and control…or is it controlled chaos? Whatever!

This playful direction in my work is fun, exciting, entertaining, and visually stimulating to me, and I hope the viewer gets it.

Finally, I try to come up with interesting, clever, and fun titles to tie into the visuals of my paintings. For this one, I considered how I would handle a mouth on fire from Mexican food. Working with word associations, I came up with hot, fire, firemen, putting out fires, burning tongues, putting out a burning house, firetrucks, etc., and came up with “Fire Station.” With that hot and spicy food (fire) being served in a café (building/house/station), “Fire Station” was the perfect solution for this painting. The other option was “Firehouse,” but I think “Fire Station” works even better.”   Chuck Middlekauff

“Fire Station”
Chuck Middlekauff
acrylic  40″ x 50″
$6,000

(Click images to enlarge)

Read additional information about Chuck Middlekauff.

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