By Claire Davenport
You may have spotted artist Robert Beck, with his easel and paints, parked on an Upper West Side sidewalk, inside a beloved local small business, or recording some other slice of neighborhood life with his distinctive “very brushy” style. In this interview with Rag Radio, Beck says he aims to be “in the middle of where things are happening” when he paints the biweekly scenes in his West Side Canvas series. (Home base is the studio you see in the background of the Soundcloud link below, image courtesy of Robert Beck.)
Just as engaging as Beck’s paintings are the essays that go with them. Last month, to accompany his painting of an NYC bus navigating nighttime streets, he extolled the virtues of bus riding: “[I]t’s nothing like the subterranean gloom of the subway, with its echoes, screeches, and kaleidoscopic rushes of light. Going down those steps is like entering a Hieronymus Bosch painting.”
Music courtesy of Blue Dot Sessions. And for earlier installments of Rag Radio segments with West Side Rag contributors, listen to Claire’s interviews with WSR Weekend columnist Tracy Zwick, cartoonist Gary Martin, photographer Steve Harmon, the authors of Ruthless Advice, her talk with Rag cartoonist Bob Eckstein and her conversation with WSR reporter Gus Saltonstall.
So nice to have an accomplished local artist whose canvas is our neighborhood, the Upper West (Best) Side.
Now, wouldn’t it be nice to recreate our local art space at 96th Street and exhibit Robert’s work?
As well as the many work by other local artists that used to be seen in the storefront at 107th and Broadway (previously Bank Street bookstore, now – alas, though of course better for the building – a laser skin clinic).
Thank you, Claire, for a well conducted interview and a fine technically-constructed piece. Your work adds an interesting dimension to the Rag’s “coverage,” and keeps it human. I look forward to more interviews, hopefully out into the neighborhood as well.
How do you paint nouveau-riche yuppiness?