Max Mallie's Blog: Brighton Beach Watercolor Cityscapes

Adventurous techniques and an emphasis on value lend an evocative air of timelessness
to Susan Weintraub’s Brighton Beach watercolor cityscapes. New York City threatens to dissolve in her paintings, as buildings and figures loom softly in veils of drizzle and mist that can render concrete and steel as insubstantial as a dream. Streetlights and headlights shimmer nebulously in the murk and gloom of city nights. Cars, awash in spray and blurred with movement, speed toward rain-shrouded skylines. This vision is reinforced with Weintraub’s spectacular watercolor handling in which drips, splashes, spatters and glazes provide powerful equivalents for the experience of the moisture-laden, polluted air of the city.

Weintraub says there’s a “wealth of potential subject matter in the beach, boardwalk, amusement area, mom-and-pop stores, and especially the elevated subway system that runs above the major thoroughfares and links our area to the rest of the city.”

See some of her cityscapes, below, and in the February 2016 issue of Watercolor Artist, available at northlightshop.com in print and download format, and on newsstands December 22.

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