Americana: A Journey Through Paintings and Photographs
This selection of Americana dates back to 1984, when we were visiting the USA for a year. We were captivated and inspired by its monumental buildings, vehicles and confidence in its ability to influence the rest of the world’s attitudes and tastes.
Most of the images painted at the time were medium-format watercolours measuring 22 x 30 inches, and they were destined for an exhibition back in London recording what I had seen.
The theme was ‘Eating Places’ and showed where we ate on our travels, but with an implied human presence only. The idea was to be able to look again at the everyday situation of tables, chairs, place settings and some of the buildings that housed the cafés and restaurants we ate in, without the distraction of that period’s fashions or hairstyles.
There was an optimism in the USA at the time, as it was led by former actor President Ronald Reagan, who was re-elected in a landslide victory. Significant events included the boycott of the Summer Olympics by the Soviet Union and the release of Bruce Springsteen’s iconic album Born in the U.S.A.
My wife and I started our journey in East Hampton, and in Montauk there was a scruffy off-road café in blue-painted wooden slats, with a sign reading EATS on the top of it. That was the first image painted.
Then we moved into Manhattan, where I was struck by the iconic Empire State binoculars designed and installed for the 1931 opening, and the safety railings to deter jumpers.
The Victorian-era buildings at the time adapted themselves to their downstairs tenants, using their own language where they served excellent Chinese food. The mixture of traditional windows, blinds, stainless steel and gaudy graphics was typical of the image ‘125th Street’.
In amongst all of this were the car horns, ambulance and police sirens, and the famous Yellow Cab.
I photographed, then painted, a long-bonnet Dodge Diplomat with a 5.2-litre V8 engine, which was known for its durability and sufficient power for taxi service. It rode like a sofa, with a deep, low growl, and had scratched Perspex interior partitions between the driver and the rear bench seats to stop passengers mugging the driver. I sold the original painting to a client on Long Island who I think recognised that this symbol of the great American gas-guzzling car would be on its way out sooner rather than later.
As we moved west across America by car, we stopped, recorded and painted our way across the southern and mid-western states until we reached the honeyed land of the inner west coast, where the landscape and buildings started to feature a particular sort of architecture, as seen in Taos, New Mexico, the Santa Fe diner and the Casa Blanca hotel.
That in turn gave way to the Spanish architectural vernacular, with the stucco-covered buildings of Palo Verdes, lower Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Each painting took about a week to finish and was often carried out while visiting two or three different locations, depending on the conditions for setting up the touring studio from the back of an imported, grey-market Series One Range Rover. She was our trusty steed during the trip and eventually, after conversion to USA emission-control requirements, we sold her in Los Angeles to a famous actor of the time called Tony Curtis.
There was then an ‘Americana’ gap until August 2006. On that occasion, we visited a Colorado cowboy ranch that we attended two years running. That produced a series of photographic images that are still popular as posters and limited editions to this day.
