City Summer

Google maps provide a very interesting glimpse of the world.  You can sit in front of your computer wherever you are and cruise along streets far away or around the corner.  These scenes are not happening in real time but were taken presumably by a car with a camera but it could as easily be a drone.  They are videos frozen in time.  The people will always be caught mid step where they are.  The buildings will always be standing on that street corner.  We have been capturing things forever as humans from the time man carved an image in a shell 540,000  years ago.  But Google maps is a new wrinkle.  You can go almost anywhere in the world where there is a public road and ride down it in the comfort of your home.  This is a strange and wonderful thing.
I am looking for scenes of Philadelphia for a project.  I am really not going to go out with my paint and easel or even my camera to the wilds of the city in this weather.
What to do?  In the comfort of my studio I cruise the streets.  I came across this scene in North Philadelphia that says something to me about living in the city in the summer. I not only was able to find what I was looking for but it was nice and warm there.

          

CITY SUMMER

Nancy Herman

12" x 9"

oil on hard board

$200.00

Old and New

OLD AND NEW

Nancy Herman

6" x 8"

oil on canvas board

Visiting a friend in downtown Philadelphia, I spotted these two buildings in the early evening sun, united by the sun but representing very different periods.

Looking for some words to describe the old and the new, I ran across this poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Memoriam.  It is living proof that humans don't really change and the old and the new are united by their desire for a better life, while struggling with the same problems.  Tennyson writing in the middle of the 19th century had these words to welcome the new year.  Here is one stanza.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,    

And ancient forms of party strife;    

Ring in the nobler modes of life, 

With sweeter manners, purer laws. 

In 2013 I would wish for exactly the same things.

Here is a link to the whole poem:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16131

$150.00

SPACES

Spaces

Nancy Herman 

8" x 6"

oil on canvas board

As you come into 30th Street Station on the train from New York, just before you get to the station, there is this space.  Nothing is there except for the shadow, the trash can and a pile of trash.  But there are hints of other places.  The car is just beginning to cross the bridge, the space under the bridge is leading somewhere, and there are just a glimpse of Philadelphia sky scrapers in the distance.  The tracks in the foreground are headed home.  It is a space pregnant with possibilities.

$125.00