West Side Canvas: Preparing for Spring With the Verdi Square Gardeners

By Robert Beck

I was tempted to say gardeners are great collaborators, but I don’t know that to be true, unless maybe it’s with other gardeners. There is a reason they like getting lost in their personal earthen worlds, and to be around people is probably down the list. My guess is that if the volunteers who maintain the garden at Verdi Square had their own private plots, that’s where they would be. It would be a lot less frustrating to not have to pick up the astonishing amount of trash or deal with the rock-hard soil, but together they have created and maintained an extraordinary garden filled with exotic plants and specimen trees.  It’s a lot of work spanning three seasons a year. They are my heroes and should be yours.

This is the third year the Verdi Gardeners have held their winter gathering at my studio, and I roped them into collaborating on the run-up to a painting I plan to do later this spring. Each gardener stood (or sat) at the end of the room for four or five minutes while I did a gesture sketch, placing them in position, building a family-portrait-style composition. We had a rake and shovel to add an American Gothic—Green Acres vibe to the event.

It all went well, considering there is little opportunity to go back and rearrange the figures once I’ve started. Everybody looks like they are in the same painting, which is considered a win.

I did the people first, with the help of a designated “wrangler” who switched them in and out so I could just keep painting. It took about an hour. When done, the sketched gardeners floated on the white panel. Young gardener Emily helped me by brushing in the floor with brown, and once everybody left the studio, I completed the background and foreground. I added the shadows to suggest a source of light and sense of space.

I mentioned that this was part of a plan for a painting I want to do this spring. When the weather gets nice again (it will, right?), I want to paint Verdi Garden with all the gardeners in the painting. That will be a lot trickier and take much longer. The sun will have travelled a third of its way across the sky. The light that came from the east when I began will illuminate the other side of everything by the time I finish. Shadows will swing from pointing one direction to the other.

The gardeners don’t work all day, so I might have to break it into two painting sessions, maybe establishing the landscape on the first, and coming back another Saturday to concentrate on just the gardeners. That creates the issue of whether it will be similar weather—just one way in which the project is a different level of execution.

The studio painting was to get the gardeners familiar with the process, so when the day comes to paint the full crew live at the garden, it’s not new to everybody, and I can concentrate. At least as much as possible, on a spring Saturday morning on Verdi Square.

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There are many ways to help maintain the garden at Verdi Park, opportunities that fit every talent and everyone’s level of engagement.  You can find plenty of satisfying work for people of all ages.  Visit www.friendsofverdisquare.org.  Have fun.  Get dirty.

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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