Painting is my job. I also teach as an adjunct professor at the University of Richmond and Randolph-Macon. I’m represented by a gallery up in New York — the Fischbach Gallery — and a gallery in New Jersey, Laurel Tracey. I do a lot of interiors, and as of late, I’ve done a lot of urban landscapes around Scott’s Addition. That’s where my studio is.
Most people wouldn’t think about Scott’s Addition. At first when you look at it, there’s really not much there. It’s a little bit desolate and run-down. And the buildings are really utilitarian.
They’re not prettified. They’re not made to enlighten; they’re made to do a job. And there’s something kind of inherently beautiful in that to me — an honesty that I like. But yeah, during the day there’s not much to it.
But at night, I think it’s different. First of all, nobody’s around. There’s kind of this quiet to it. Except for the hush of traffic that goes by. The concrete, the industrial glass, the bricks and all of that stuff, start to light up with the streetlights. The orange street lights with the industrial glass … the light coming out, reflecting through it … kind of shimmers in a nice way.
You start to notice some pretty extraordinary things that happen. How light reflects maybe off one of the old trolley rails or off of a sewer cap or something. You see Braves Stadium, and the night games kind of ignite the whole horizon over there. And then you start to notice the night people. People working on the night shift. It has this kind of quality to it. You can’t not think about Hopper and his “Nighthawks,” and what was called that American loneliness.
It’s so funny, because you really are the only person out there. It’s like three in the morning, you’re painting the train tracks, and somebody will drive by and look at you very strangely. They kind of treat this as where you come to work, not a place where you paint. They don’t think of it as a subject worthy of a painting.
Some of them stop. I’ve met some really interesting people. There’s these homeless people that live under the tracks, one of whose names is Mike. The sweetest guy in the world. And he would stop and give me impromptu critiques of my work. He’d be real enthusiastic about it, and it’s really kind of encouraging to me.
Even with places you find to be very familiar, you find passages of light and shadow that you never noticed before when you paint. Painting becomes kind of a way to discover those things. — As told to Kelly Shaw; photographed by Stephen Salpukas
To see more of Keiser’s work: www.duanekeiser.com.
