Bruce Richards Essay
#43 Virginia Broersma (Visiting Painting)
#44 Bruce Richards (Response painting)
The visiting canvas was considered for several days as if it were a crime photo needing detection. The swollen damage on the right cheek, the mouth an afflicted hole and the blackened eye in the work took me back to Andrews Hardware at 7th and Union in downtown Los Angeles.
I lived in Downtown LA from 1980-86. The Ramparts/Pico Union area. I was the manager of an artist studio complex located on the top two floors of the building. My duties included keeping the entrances and parking lot cleaned in the areas used by our tenants. We had a few neighbors.
The Silver Strand Hotel, located across the parking lot was a half way house for Drug and Alcohol rehab, housing 150 persons. Daily, starting at about 3pm, emerged a string of women that began working as the day laborers were returning to the neighborhood at their workday’s end. Their clients varied as widely as the types of cars they went off in, some went looking for a spot or room. Occasionally, some of them showed up on the street bruised since the last time I had seen them. Sometimes it was from a pimp, sometimes a client who wanted more. The swelling was never easy to hide with makeup, scarfs or collars.
This flood of retrieved memories and images lead me to set up a small still life with some elements that may have been seen inside the rooms of the Silver Strand Hotel.
Room key/dropped thong/money envelope on a background derived from the blue/brown of the visiting work to the blue/grey of mine.