Zzyzx Road

 

A newly finished painting, still drying on the easel : “Zzyzx Road”, 2024, oil on canvas, 30 by 40 inches .

 

 

 

This latest painting was inspired by our 2022 cross-country move from Los Angeles to Chicago.  Just one day out and we found ourselves stuck in LA worthy traffic, idling  for hours in an apocalyptic landscape, a tractor trailer aflame at the Zzyzx Road exit ( an exit exactly to where??).

The truck spewed a noxious pea green smoke.

The intense August desert heat beating down upon our failing rental truck , A/C flickering, our aged pug Viola vulnerable to the hellish environment and outside our window we had just passed giant ice cream cone stands, beautiful old mobile homes left to the elements, a surprising number of erectile dysfunction billboards and most curiously an abandoned sail boat , docked in sand .

It was a moment in time , one of quite a many moments, that inspired our Fleeing Babylon in the first place . When traffic did begin to move along on, that other great Babylon , LasVegas loomed ahead .

Further inspiration and another painting perhaps .

I had scribbled down sketches as the truck bumped along, securing mentally paintings I knew I needed to make ; paintings as reminders of the desert, of despair, of sham, of worldliness and also humor .

I didn’t begin the actual painting until this last July, but had been mulling  the composition about  in my head.

 

 

I had left this painting for a week at 2023’s end, allowing the holidays to distract, hoping to reset my eyes. Returning to the studio after that break, I realized it was indeed finished .

Of course I couldn’t not add a few more brush strokes .

Details follow:

The geometric forms, the castle-like structures were inspired by what  I saw as we whizzed by.

The figure of Death at the camera , filming the polychromatic horror show was inspired by the very final chapter of Thomas Mann’s  Death in Venice, where the central character Gustav van Aschenbach, dying upon the beaches of a plague stricken Venice, is filmed by an abandoned movie camera. A haunting, perversely humorous ending for anyone seeking worldly fame.

What really brought a chuckle was, while driving for hours through the bleak and sterile godless land, this casino sign popped up, my thought:Exactly!

I knew it would make it into the painting somehow, almost titled the painting Terrible, Not Good.

And that is that!

Happy New Year!