Traction Avenue

I found an old Polaroid photo of my art studio on Traction Avenue, in the center of the downtown LA artist’s district. Notice the tall ceilings with huge beams, this place was gigantic, about 2000 square feet. I used to ride my skateboard around inside my studio, turning figure-eights around the support columns. This is just the one small corner of the studio I used for preparatory painting. I used to work on bigger paintings on the other wall and I could stand back 50 feet from my paintings and get a good look from a distance.

tractionave

I liked to paint preparatory works on paper tacked to the wall, looks like I’ve started an underpainting. My pallette and brushes are on top of an old hospital-bed cart, which seems to be the preferred pallete table in art studios everywhere. Down in the lower right corner are some high powered track lights that I never finished installing once I discovered how hot they got.
This studio is legendary for many reasons, it was one of the most hotly contested studio spaces on Traction Avenue. I went back to visit a couple years ago, the whole area is now gentrified. My old studio is now a used CD store.

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