New York Finger Paintings
Jorge Colombo looks like any other commuter in Grand Central Station as he moves his finger back and forth across the screen of his iPhone. But while it appears Colombo is checking his email or perhaps sending a text, he’s actually painting.
No bulky canvases, messy paint brushes or easel needed – the pocket-sized iPhone has allowed Colombo to bring his art form to the streets of New York. Using an app called Brushes, he captures candid New York City moments with a swipe of his finger. His digital finger paintings are done inconspicuously on location because he says he “prefers an image to carry my memory of the hour or two I spend standing on a sidewalk, drawing from urban life passing by.”
Colombo often scouts painting locations, like New York’s most iconic terminal, but refers to much of his images as “accidents of everyday errands.” His latest book, “New York: Finger Paintings,” showcases 100 diverse scenes of New York City life. “I’ve been fascinated by the visual patchwork of the cities,” he writes. “I look for the traces, the scars, the accidents that have changed the character of a building or a street over the years.”
Below is a selection of images from “New York: Finger Paintings,” with insights from the artist:
What we have here is a play on relative scales, the Empire State Building almost as small as the window where a mystery interaction is taking place, and both dwarfed by the monumental majesty of the looming water towers. - Jorge Colombo
Courtesy of Chronicle Books
The park was busy that evening. Just off the frame of this view, a movie was being projected outdoors, and it took me a while to decide what to draw. I went with the skyline; the outdoor projection ended up in Adrian Tomine’s wonderful cover for the August 24, 2009, issue of The New Yorker. - Jorge Colombo
Image courtesy of Chronicle Books
Hitchcock set the tone: backyard windows as a multiplex theater where every window tells a different tale. I was living in Washington Heights at the time, and from the kitchen window, I had a vantage point on someone’s fridge raids. - Jorge Colombo
Image courtesy of Chronicle Books
It’s hard to keep a New York City taxicab in the same place for very long, so I just stood on a Times Square corner and painted a bit of each car that stopped at the red light. This must be a composite of about fifty taxis. They are not that different one from the other. - Jorge Colombo
Image courtesy of Chronicle Books
Living right next to the George Washington Bridge (in an apartment we called the Ramphouse) meant that the last steps on my way home always offered a classic snapshot of the bridge, be it fog, night, or sunset. (Hitchcock included a misty shot of it in The Wrong Man.) The bridge is great for strolling on (you’re on the traffic “sidewalk,” right above the water), even if there’s little to do near the Jersey exit. During rush hour, you see countless people clearly marching to or from work. Can’t think of a more monumental commute. -Jorge Colombo
Image courtesy of Chronicle Books
Back when I lived in Chicago, I frequented many hot dog stands. There they fill up the bun with a lot of trimmings: onion, relish, sauerkraut, and so on. So, as an ex-Midwesterner I feel something lacking in the starkness of New York–style, or should I say Coney Island–style, hot dogs. But, considering that this painting made it onto the cover of The New Yorker as the first digital cover created in the very contained and restrained context of an iPhone, it makes sense that it depicts New York City's classic mini-restaurant on wheels. - Jorge Colombo
Image courtesy of Chronicle Books
It took me years to get a bedroom window with water towers on the horizon. There’s something frank, unabashedly utilitarian about sticking such a functional element above a building. Sometimes they get encased in some walled contraption, but that’s a prudish move that reflects more poorly on the architecture than if the water tower had been left alone. - Jorge Colombo
Image courtesy of Chronicle Books
The A line makes a complex connection between Manhattan and the JFK airport, so the odds of bumping into luggage are always a tad higher here than on other lines. Sneaking over someone’s head or shoulder to consult the subway map is a minor urban etiquette conundrum. - Jorge Colombo
Image courtesy of Chronicle Books
Following is an excerpt from the book written by Colombo:
Cities end up acquiring their visual personality by way of collective contributions. Hard as they are to trace back to their origins, there are factors that define prevalent styles of windows or a main palette for buildings. Sometimes the identity of a city is obvious—details and landmarks easy to spot—but often that identity is to be found in subliminal touches. I find it a richer challenge to extract the intrinsic New York–ness or the San Francisco–ness out of a nondescript vista. That essence can be in the proportion of the sidewalks, scale of the buildings, quirks of architecture, urban vegetation, or quality of light…
I grew up in Lisbon, Portugal, and moved to the United States in 1989, at the age of twenty-six. I’ve been fascinated by the visual patchwork of the cities I have lived in (Chicago, San Francisco, New York). I look for the traces, the scars, the accidents that have changed the character of a building or a street over the years. Architecture and urbanism’s grander designs are fascinating, but so are the instinctive interventions of mere users, clumsy and misguided as they may be. There’s as much humanity in dysfunction as in sophistication. Every detail, accretion, modification, damage, or patch speaks of the people who at some point passed through the landscape. I like to imagine their stories. – Jorge Colombo, New York: Finger Paintings, Chronicle Books (2011)
WATCH VIDEO:
This video shows how Jorge Colombo’s finger paintings are made. The video is from Colombo’s Night Windows series, which will be on view at the Jen Bekman Gallery in Soho from Dec. 10- 23, 2011. The Morse Code soundtrack spells the actual address of the building in the picture.
