182nd Street #1

One hot summer day I got in my car and set out intent on painting some busy Bronx intersection. As I was driving, the day started really heating up, and I found myself heading into the more tree-filled neighborhoods bordering the Bronx Zoo. I drove down Southern Boulevard, turned right onto 182nd Street and was immediately struck by the concentration of community gardens in the area.

I pulled over to a bodega sandwiched between two such gardens where several people were hanging out in the shade of the building. I got out of my car and approached the group of children and adults who were standing around and sitting on the stoop and on chairs.

"Hello. I'm a painter," I said. "Do you mind if I set up my easel here and paint?" I was met by a mixture of blank and perplexed expressions. Not to be swayed, I started to set up and soon the children came over and stood around my easel watching intently everything I did.

I had been painting only a few minutes when a woman in the window above the bodega shouted down to me, "You're in my view! You're in my view!" I wasn't sure what she meant. "I'm going to paint this scene," I explained, gesturing vaguely in the direction of all the people on the block. "You're in my view," she kept repeating, and not knowing what else to do, I began moving my easel. "Don't pay any attention to her," a young man called over to me from the stoop. "She's just a grouch, she grumbles at everybody." Several others called out in agreement with him (I began to feel I had entered into the local group dynamic) so I looked up at the woman, gave her a big friendly smile, and finally got down to some painting.

The hours passed and (in the shade) it was a beautiful day. Several folks came by to watch my progress and to chat, and I felt emboldened to ask some of them to hold certain positions longer or to move to one side or another. A table and set of chairs suddenly materialized down at the end of the block where another group of folks assembled to play cards or dominos, and this fit well into my composition. A boy of about thirteen who was walking home from school asked where he could stand to be included in the painting. While I was directing him as to where to stand, another kid complained, "He isn't even from this block. Why should he be in the picture and not us?" I finally gave in and put everyone into the painting. (I didn't tell them that once back in the studio I'd have to remove some of them for the sake of the composition.)

All day long, an older man had been sitting on a chair that was chained to a fence halfway down the block. He wore a colorful hat and I put him in the painting, liking the splash of color against the fence. Late in the afternoon, he approached me and took a close look at my painting. "Hey. You've got no right to paint me without my permission," he said. I looked at his face, and then at the painting. His image was less than an inch high and the only possibly recognizable feature was his colorful cap. "I don't want anybody to find me, and now they will find me because they'll see me in your painting," he predicted, extremely distraught. I dabbed my paintbrush on my palette and with a flick of my wrist made his hat black and yellow. This seemed to placate him and he shuffled back to his chair grumbling, "There's just no privacy in the world anymore, no, none at all."