On the Corner

On the Corner. Leonard Koscianski, 42″x26″, oil on canvas, 2017.

On the Corner is a medium size painting, in oils on canvas. It is a night scene with different color light coming from different sources – interior lighting, a TV screen, a traffic light, the moon, a stain glass window. This manmade lighting creates our night time world. It is Surrealist Art combined with American Scene painting, and American Primitive art. The lighting combined with the severe simplification of the houses and trees creates a dream world of memory rather than observation.
Different levels of image and reality are represented. A woman looking at herself in a mirror, a child watching TV, a woman seen through a window are examples of this. These reflections of reality, and transmissions of reality are real and not real at the same time. Just as this painting itself is real and not real at the same time.
Technically speaking the pebbly road and shingles were created by underpainting the textures with raised white paint. When the white was dry, thin oil paint was glazed over this creating a luminous color. The surreal space is a distortion. The viewer is looking down at the immediate foreground, then gradually moves to a straight out view in the distance.