Watch where you’re walking – art underfoot.
Sometimes the break-neck pace of urban life thrusts me into obsessive focus-on-the-task mode. Head down. Beat the crowd. Find a seat on the subway. Fight the dude hailing your cab. Make the 7:20 for Garden City. And, along the way – find a restroom that doesn’t completely gross you out.
Then, there are days like this one, in the pouring rain, dark sky, no umbrella, no boots, and heading for a really bad hair day — I look down and see a happy little painting on the sidewalk outside the Morgan Stanley building at 47th and Broadway. I have no idea how all those colors landed on the street. But I loved the combination, and especially adderal appreciated the yellow “accents” spray-painted by someone I surmised worked for the city water dept.
(Pic #2) Abstract painting by Gerhard Richter.
No one seemed to notice – but it stopped me in my tracks. I grabbed a shot in the downpour. The periwinkles, lilacs, and blues let me know all was right with the world. Oddly, the “accidental” art reminded me of the work of master German abstract painter Gerhard Richter (Pic #2, left) — an artist who works and re-works his canvas until it resembles nothing like his starting point.
I am reminded that art can also happen in an instant — it’s there for the viewing — if only we allow it to emerge.
