Welcome to the e-gallery devoted to my paintings on New York City building construction sites. Scroll down to view paintings available to collect. To see more of my artwork, including my current online exhibition, visit my portfolio website, www.gwynethleech.com
I am a painter living and working in New York City and my subject is the rapidly changing urban landscape as experienced through the construction sites of super-tall buildings in midtown Manhattan. I move around the area with a travel easel and paint repeatedly near different construction projects. I am thrilled by watching the light and weather change endlessly across this mountainous man-made landscape which itself is always changing as the buildings grow.
This fascination dates to 2015, when construction of a 42-floor building began outside my painting studio window on West 39th Street. My first impulse was to move. Instead, I decided to stay and make paintings of the process as the new building went up and blocked my view. I started calling it the Monolith. It had this slab-like quality, this immovability — and it began to represent other monolithic things in my life that couldn't be shifted. It became a metaphor for things we can’t change, but have to learn to live with and to work around in some way. This transformation in my thinking and my art-making is chronicled in a multi-award winning short documentary by New York film-maker, Angelo Guglielmo, also called the Monolith. You can watch it below:
I have now spent several years documenting sky-scraping projects that are dramatically changing the cityscape, such as Hudson Yards, Billionaire's Row on 57th Street, the new MoMA tower on west 53rd Street, and One Vanderbilt rising next to Grand Central Station.
To view available paintings, click the thumbnails below.
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I am currently doing a give-away of three copies of the printed book from my painting exhibition, Constructions Sites. Three people will be selected to receive a copy each by snail mail. I will announce the winners on October 20th, 2021. Once you up for my email list you are all set to take part!
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