SHEILA SCHWID
14th Street Reflections Paintings.

For the last 6 years I have been inspired by the people on 14th Street.

I take photos of them through the windows of the 14th Street Crosstown Bus, and from them create paintings, incorporating their body language, the details of the buildings, and the reflections from the bus windows, the storefronts, and sometimes from the lens.

These reflections are amazing and mysterious. Sometimes they look like a double or triple image, sometimes they are sharp edged and flat, white and wonderfully shaped. Sometimes they look like smoke or clouds. One can lose one’s center when looking at them. Sometimes the shapes cover part of a body or a head, or go through a head. Sometimes they look like flashes of lightning.

When civilisation was young, we had gods of thunder, lightning, the sun, the moon, the wind, the water, the trees, the birds, and animals. The gods had myths which explained the forces we had around us. Now we have the forces of the noise of automobiles, sirens, people talking, screaming, advertising, crowds. To me the reflections represent the aggressive forces that fragment these fragile human lives, and cumulatively take their toll on our very centers.