Bus Stop Paintings is a series of watercolor paintings that seeks to capture the vernacular architecture of immigrant and working class neighborhoods. These paintings are my attempt to catalog hand-painted signs, common brick, sun and shadow, metal grates, old window displays, architectural terra cotta, hand-written notes on front doors, the stains, spots, and gunk on sidewalks, and the layers of care and tenderness that accumulate in buildings over the years. I began this series when I lived in Denver, and continued it when I moved to West Texas and then back to my hometown of Chicago. Along the way I have also painted buildings in Spain, New Mexico, and Occupied Palestine.

Many of the shops I have painted are now, just a few years later, gone. Others, like Laundryland and Edie’s Liquors, have lost their beautiful signage. Most of the others are threatened by the grim march of time and the autonomic workings of real estate and finance capital. The art critic John Berger wrote that “Photography is the process of rendering observations self-conscious.” Bus Stop Paintings is an attempt to take part in that same process. I hope these paintings remind you to notice, appreciate, and treasure the richly decorated buildings around us, before they’re gone.