The Manhattan Bridge

click image to enlarge

Of all the architectural forms there are I like to paint the image of a bridge the most. Its form and its purpose are so perfectly symbolic, indicating a transition on a huge scale from one place, or idea, or situation to another. I have read that trains are a great symbol of death. This comes from the fact that for years whenever someone died, people would say, “They went away on a trip”. It seems to me that the bridge is the symbol of a transition to a new life, like marriage, going to college, or starting a new career.

This little painting was not so easy to paint. There are certain problems with an exact painting like this that have to be dealt with . The biggest problem is how to paint all those exact little lines and shapes without letting your hand touch the canvas. You can’t let you hand touch the canvas because the cloth is stretched across the stretchers and it gets dented if you rest your hand on it. In order to paint those little lines and shapes you first hang the painting flat on a wall, next you attach a board horizontally above the painting. Then you take a long stick with a little foot attached at the top. This stick rests on the board across the top of the painting and comes down in such a way that you can rest your hand on it while you are painting. This device looks like, and is called a “bridge” and without this home made tool it would be completely impossible to do a painting like this. At first, when I would do a painting requiring this kind of accuracy, I would set the painting flat on a table, put books on either side of the painting, and then put a board across to act as the bridge. Later I simply used a piece of wood with two small feet attached, but finally I decided to transfer the entire structure to a wall, and work flat on the wall, for this reason. When you paint on a table, you later look at the work hung on the wall, and it often looks so changed in the different light, that you practically have to start all over.

This painting measures 8.5” x 11”. It is signed with an R on the front, and full signature and date on the back, Richard Britell, September 21, 2001