I made this when I was living in the east village, in New York, trying to understand the landscape – a landscape of fire escapes, utility poles, and buildings, all made of steel and stone. In a way, this is a landscape painting of downtown New York, using the native materials.

I wanted to directly address the life, the animacy, that’s still in these materials, even after all the many steps of refinement; to speak to the generations of craft, of human labor and ingenuity that shaped this landscape; to understand the forms that emerge when all that human effort meets the constraints and demands of an ancient material like iron.