The picture is about joy but about many other things as well. Autobiographical things. Compositional things. Contrasting things.

The title “neustadt” refers to East German new town housing most well known from the planned community of Halle-Neustadt (colloquially referred to as HaNeu, pronounced like Hanoi). The HaNeu blocks were typical of much of post war housing blocks in the DDR, including outer neighborhoods in East Berlin where I spent time. The buildings in the picture reference my time in Berlin years ago but also are a nod to my years spent practicing architecture. The hard geometries of it and flat rendering of the sky are also a compositional counterpoint to the gestural remainder of the picture. The joy of the three figures are a counterpoint - compositionally, figuratively and literally - to the austere housing block context that represents generic lack of state vitality, if not oppression.

But, the joy that exists within the austere context is meant to be an optimistic - if perhaps unrealistic - statement; an antidote to (my) pessimism…