Crossroads. Original painting 34” x 72”, brush-worked oil paints on canvas.
Crossroads is the second painting of Guido and his all-chrome bike. Using the same concept of Open Road, I wanted to see what new feelings could be imparted by using a different glove, handlebar and landscape.
Over three hundred hours went into painting Crossroads.
The road, when I first painted it, looked like a river. So I put tiny stones everywhere on it to make it look solid. But the stones ended up looking like they were on top of the road. So I painted a layer of road overtop to embed them- and in the process lost many and had to repaint them again. Then came the addition of potholes and skid marks and scuffed-out traffic lines. It seemed a relentless job.
Equally taxing was the depiction of gnarled branches imprinted against the sky. Back and forth I went, painting branches, erasing them with sky, painting more branches. Painting more sky....
The shining chrome of the bike materialized effortlessly.
