Sleepless Wonder

Lyric Justine

Acrylic on Canvas

This April, I went on a band trip to New York City, along with the other Band/Art folks (me, Elliot, and Skye). We all needed reference photos to use in our paintings, so we decided to take a single photo in New York to use as the reference for all of our paintings, and see the different ways we abstracted it (the photo chosen was from Time Square). I was captivated by the contrast of the horizontal lines of the stairs and the verticality of the buildings in the back, and I took that idea and blew it to the extreme. Bold, Simple, horizontal, flat, minimalistic shapes on the bottom half, chaotic, rough, layered, vertical lines and forms for the top. The three shapes at the bottom represent Elliot, Me, and Skye (from left to right). I’ve never done abstract art like this before, and what I was trying to do with the extreme contrast felt really risky, and I was very scared as to how it would turn out, but personally, I feel like it turned out spectacular. The title was chosen as a combination of two of New York’s nicknames: “City that Never Sleeps”, and “Wonder City”. With all the bright and exciting colours, I felt that it really captured the sleepless bustle of New York, and the verticality makes it feel grand... perhaps wonderful? It just kind of sounded cool.