Europe Album
Around the time of my first trip to Europe, I found a carefully assembled album of photographs from the MIT Choral Society's 1956 European tour. I kept the album because its careful but crumbling construction was touching and because I noticed that they departed on July 6th, my birthday.
I made these paintings years later before my next trip. They respond in part to the fresh but fleeting joy of sight when traveling. There is a constant visual thrill of the new and different and an awareness of the specialness of the experience.
This series also considers the practice of tourist photography, in which the traveler recreates and perpetuates the same images of well-known attractions. Images of a bridge/statue/church/river/etc. are composed the same way by the many conforming viewers. There's comfort in this continuity and tradition.
