Under the Paint: The Overpass Painting

Here is a painting of an overpass

Paulette's painting of the overpass at the junction of Freeway 24 and Broadway is really famous because it completely captures what it means to be alive and living everywhere.  Its universal emotional language speaks to and for everybody like when words go in your ear and come out your mouth, and nobody can look at the painting without crying because of its profound impact and truthocity.  But there's a whole story behind it, and it goes like this.

Paulette got in her car and drove a couple of blocks, parking her car on a street near where she painted the painting.  She got out of her car and carried her stuff to the painting spot, the dirt and weed hellstrip in front of a duplex or fourplex or something like that.  It was sunny and the traffic was loud, and sometimes cars coming off the freeway would whiz past her through the intersection, and this was dramatic and impressive.

The guy who drives the street cleaning machine inched up to her before turning on his street cleaning machine, and he stopped to look, but Paulette hadn't hardly started, so there wasn't much for him to see, so he asked "How long does it take?" and Paulette said, "about 4 hours," and he replied, "Wow" presumably because he thought that was a long time.

Some school kids, about 30 of them, walked across the intersection going somewhere, but none stopped to look, and some small girl with a women asked, "what are you painting?" and Paulette said, "I am painting the overpass."  In general, the foot traffic was light, but the car traffic more than made up for it, adding an unmistakable urgency and a vital, american excitement to this beautiful ode to the overpass.