Prospect Park Waterfall

I painted this one day while watching many folks come look at and play in the waterfall. They seemed to transfer their enthusiasm to each successive group through the large rock in the center. The rock is perhaps the only aspect that is historically the same as the original park design. The bridge and the waterfall have been reconstructed several times over. This brings up interesting questions of what is original and what is a replica?

Like many of my paintings, the location of the viewer is ambiguous; perhaps we are standing actually in the waterfall. I purposely employ these compositional tricks to slightly knock the viewer off balance or simply question what it is they are looking at.

My nephew was watching the smurfs movie and suddenly exclaimed "Uncle, look! Your painting!" — he had spotted this waterfall in the movie. It was the portal that brought the Smurfs to New York… except the waterfall was depicted as being in Central Park in the movie!

So many of our landscapes are stand-ins, referencing other places and periods in history.