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Behind the Painting
Brooklyn Heights on a Friday afternoon is a mess of cars and buses and delivery bikes, and convoys of kids crossing the narrow streets. It gets quiet as you walk deeper into the neighborhood, past the old townhouses and the diners and the Halloween decorations and the leaves spiraling slowly to the ground. The light is beckoning you to the water.
You post up on a park bench on the promenade. You paint beside two kids playing with their grandmother, a half dozen dogs and their walkers, and an old man in a wheelchair and a red scarf.
You paint to the low rumble of cars on the expressway below and the shouts of the kids playing in the playground behind you and the hum of the occasional helicopter in the sky above.
The woman approaches with her grandkids. “He’s just getting started,” she says. “Are you going to put the ferry in?”
You hadn’t noticed it yet, too busy trying to get the perfect blend of fall color, deep yellows and greens, burnt reds and oranges. You paint the ferry, arriving and leaving the Wall Street stop like clockwork. You paint the towers of Lower Manhattan. The trees of Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Everyone around you is doing what you’re doing. Watching the sunset reflecting on the skyline. Following the boats up the East River.
