exterior · 2020
Edison Street
The challenge
A working storefront with doors, windows, vents and signage across its whole face, and no blank panel anywhere on it. Nothing could be composed around a rectangle, because there is no rectangle.
This is what the palette looks like given a whole building. Magenta into purple into blue, two portraits in teal set against it, running the full length of the brick and straight over the door frames and window reveals rather than stopping at them.
Hummingbirds hold it together. They are painted far larger than life, which is the only reason they are legible from across the street, and they repeat down the wall so somebody walking past reads one continuous piece instead of a row of separate paintings.
The color is the point. Saturated magenta on red brick is a deliberately loud choice on a street of unpainted masonry, and it is the kind of wall people describe by its color long before they describe what is on it.
