2025. Oil on panel. 11"x14"
 
This painting was orignally painted for the Fairport Canal Days poster contest. However, I didn't realize submissions were in person and I left it till last minute!
 
This painting was inspired by local canal landmarks, the history of the Erie Canal, as well as folk painting. Most of my work is in oil paint which has a history of illusion and realism. However, American folk painting uses a lot of simplified shapes and outlines instead of form, and an imagined perspective that highlights landmarks and relations between places over actual distance and the illusion of looking though a window.
 
I tried to combine those ideas for a few reasons. First, the canal is 200 years old and I wanted to celebrate it's prescence in American History with a historically American way of painting. I also wanted to transition from the historical role of the canal to the canal today. In the bottom of the painting there is an old boat with a mule based on old pictures of the canal. Even the buildings near the historical boat are older houses. There are fields of wheat along the sides; wheat that was grown and shipped along the canal. New York was part of the bread basket region for a long time. Rochester even recieved the name FLOUR city from the grain mills there. Of course now with industry gone, it's FLOWER city from all the lilacs. In the distance, top of the painting sits Fairport and the famous lift bridge illuminated in the promising mornging light. Along the canal are historical and present day sstructures you can find if you go along the canal. Bridges, a lock, the Colonial Belle, and old manufacturing buildings and small towns that benefited from the canal.