West Side Canvas: Special Edition; Robert Beck’s 100th WSR Painting and Essay

Here at a Hundred
Essay and painting by Robert Beck

Making a hundred of anything one-at-a-time by hand is a lot. My first Rag column was September 4, 2022. Here we are, three years and a hundred West Side Canvas essays later. The math doesn’t work out because I was published weekly for a year before switching to bi-weekly. It was just too much with everything else I had going on. It’s still a push, but one I love. I’m using this milepost as an opportunity to reflect.

I’ve been painting our here-and-now around the world for thirty-five years, mostly in Bucks County, New York, and Maine. I’ve painted in operating rooms, on morning shows, on the bridge of a towboat pushing barges down the Mississippi at night, and at a Native American 4th of July party in Montana. Many of these images have been accompanied by essays. Whether on the streets of Dakar, in a café in Avignon, along the hedgerows of Wales, or in fishing villages in New England, the common thread is us.  

Quite a few of my subjects don’t exist anymore. A day will come when I won’t either, but the images and writings will remain observations of places we knew and things we did, as cultures and as neighbors. It’s impossible to say what that individual human voice will tell us decades from now, but things are looking a little dicey at this juncture of technical and political abandon. It will be in some data cave if somebody wants it.

Every subject has an identity, and I try to capture a piece of its truth. The old-school service at Tip-Top Shoes, the textural overload of More & More, a smell of red sauce at Pappardella, and the squeak of a basketball court. Each of my Rag columns contains a small slice of the Upper West Side.

I love the challenge, the being there, the watching it come off my fingers. I’ve had some great moments and met wonderful people. Every now and then, I’ll have a conversation that snaps and crackles, and there’s not much better than that.  

The question I hear most is about how I choose my subjects. The simple explanation is that I assume things that matter to me might matter to other people, and I’m naturally inclined to share. We tend to move through the world around us focused on our personal trajectory, but I give out a “Hey, look at this,” when I see something that catches my interest. Knitty City, Gray’s Papaya, a firehouse, a sidewalk Christmas tree seller, are things we see but don’t stop to study. Who’s got time? I spend three or four hours observing my subject, its movements and relationships, building a twelve-by-sixteen-inch impression out of the facets I feel matter while ignoring those that don’t. How does the light play? Does the space feel expansive or confining? Where do my eyes go? Why does the encounter feel like it does? When it works, it triggers a common understanding.

Mine are people stories, told by a person. My computer tries to write them for me, making suggestions from its vast store of popular, average, and correct phrases stuffed in its digital belly, but I do it myself, as if you and I were talking over coffee at the Utopia. Data has its place, but not in my voice. Same goes for the paintings — there is nothing between me and my subjects.

At 75 years old I could dial back on the challenges, but I’m inclined to test myself. I suppose my father had something to do with that. The Canvas column allows me to exercise my passions and learn more about my community at the same time. It’s my ticket to places I wouldn’t otherwise get to go.

Painting and writing the column is not all peach ice cream, but I’m not going to complain. I’m fortunate that the Rag gives me this opportunity to share what I see with you, and I’m buoyed by your comments and support. In a city where it can be difficult to make connections, the Rag and its readers have given me a home. I’m enjoying the ride and grateful for your company. 

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See more of Robert Beck’s work and visit his UWS studio at www.robertbeck.net. Let him know if you have a connection to an archetypical UWS place or event that would make a good West Side Canvas subject. Thank you!

Listen to an interview with Robert Beck on Rag Radio — Here.

Note: Before Robert Beck started West Side Canvas, his essays and paintings were featured in Weekend Column. See Robert Beck’s earlier columns here and here.

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