Ryan Fitzer

Details of window paintings

Day-glow window paintings have been calling my name lately. Of course, this is the main goal of such signage, but more and more, as I pass by day by day, I start to really wonder why. Is it just the color? Maybe the big, chunky forms used in the lettering? It’s probably a mixture of that and more, including the fact that all of these are from the windows of food establishments (I’m weak). But why day-glow? Is that appetizing? Or does it simply get your attention and then hand you off to the next level of advertising? I’m not sure but what I’m interested in is the combinations of form and color represented in these windows, as well as using a recognizable visual language to put forth my own agenda.

The idea is to paint (something I’ve not done very well with in the past). There’s a culmination of a lot of previous fits and starts brewing in my head and I’ve had a deep urge to do some flat work to try and accomplish things that wouldn’t work in the current sculpture. As they are now, I find these images beautiful enough to very well be the finished works. But I have more needs than just beauty, although that is a big factor. Paintings have an ability to create their own context as opposed to sculpture, which relies, for the most part, on the physical space it resides in. It’s context which I find most attractive. One that I can have more control over.

I guess this could be considered a progression of the poured works, the difference being that I saw those as two-dimesional representations of three-dimentional objects. Objects that float in space, devoid of any context (I wanted a pure focus on the object with no interference). Orange to Red has a lot more to do with this direction.