Cornered
When I travel I’m always on the look out for interesting street art. I found this arresting piece on the corner of a dilapidated wall in Milan. I photographed it 23 months ago to the day (20 November 2018) and have been drawing it for the last fortnight. The title “Cornered” relates to the figure’s physical placement on a corner as well as being about the tense situation she dramatizes. Note “a disagio” on the top left of the yellow rectangle. It means discomfort.
Street art soon weathers, fades and tears. It has a very limited life span. Now and then I find a piece that I’d like to give another kind of life to – by making a drawing of it. Most of my street art collection is from sources I found in Paris including “Rebel Rebel” which I drew in 2018.
You can view nearly two decades of my street art drawings here. Not only is it the art itself that I am interested in but where it is placed and the (often decaying) conditions of the surrounding surfaces. While it makes its mark on urban structures it also marks time until eventually it vanishes without a trace – as indeed, in the end, do we!
Afterword: When I posted “Cornered” on Facebook, a reader identified where the original image had come from. The actress was Betty Lou Gerson from the 1949 film “The Red Menace”.
