Wicker Park

​​This series of small paintings illustrates my old neighborhood in Chicago, in and around the intersection of Winchester and Division streets where my apartment was located.  I created them when I learned I would be moving away from Chicago as a way to remember how things were.  At that time I was working in an architectural firm creating digital illustrations of office parks.  I was required to use a standard set of colors, lines and formats for the office parks which resulted in very cold, abstract, detail-less images.  I thought it would be funny to portray my very real, very gritty, very colorful neighborhood in this completely homogenous way.  There is no way I could possibly capture all the flavors, colors, sounds and smells of this place, so I opted for a ridiculous portrait recognizable by no one.