Andrew Lenaghan
Since the late 1990s, Andrew Lenaghan has made a point of capturing the hidden corners of New York City, finding those details most of us miss out on. Whether it be a dead end street of dilapidated warehouses or a busy intersection in downtown Brooklyn, there is a palpable sense of the city through his paintings. As far-flung as his wanderings take him however, the relentless cycle of building and re-building gives him an ever-shifting terrain to engage with. There are a few locations that he has returned to time and again in his paintings, though rarely are they the same each visit.
One of his more remote subjects is the Rockaways, the narrow peninsula at the southernmost border between Brooklyn and Queens that protects Jamaica Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. As with nearby Coney Island - also a recurring subject - the relationship between the city and nature through the changing seasons is part of the appeal. Over the decades Lenaghan has returned to explore the peninsula’s beaches, boardwalks, residential enclaves and the de-commissioned military base at Fort Tilden, now a National Recreation Area. Much like the city at large, the Rockaways provide a microcosm of textures and settings to paint, from the rolling breakers at Rockaway Beach to the decaying, graffiti-covered structures remaining at Fort Tilden, where the barracks, munitions depots and batteries are now overgrown and as much part of the landscape as the brush and sand. There is a synergy here with the old industrial neighborhoods like Red Hook and Gowanus that are such a staple of Lenaghan’s paintings, particularly as many such neighborhoods were built up along the city’s waterways.
On a more recent foray to the Rockaways, he chose to turn to the bay side of the peninsula, looking past the Park Police Marine Unit from just east of Riis Landing, to a view of the Marine Parkway Bridge in the distance. Connecting Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to Jacob Riis Park, the bridge was built in 1937, under the aegis of Robert Moses and was intended to improve access to the popular summer destination. Unsurprisingly, the bridge has been a subject of Lenaghan’s before, the last time in 2015 from the Brooklyn end of the span. In that painting a working barge is visible, likely completing repairs to the bridge following damage it sustained during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The hurricane was devastating to the peninsula, stripping it of much of its protective dunes, destroying countless homes and displacing hundreds, leaving its parks closed for over a year while restoration was underway. Over ten years on, much has been rebuilt and repaired, however the work continues; the clear blue sky that Lenaghan paints belying the fragile recovery achieved so far.
See more recent paintings by the artist on his page.
Andrew Lenaghan, Fort Tilden, 2021. Acrylic on panel, 17 x 28 inches.
Since the late 1990s, Andrew Lenaghan has made a point of capturing the hidden corners of New York City, finding those details most of us miss out on. Whether it be a dead end street of dilapidated warehouses or a busy intersection in downtown Brooklyn, there is a palpable sense of the city through his paintings. As far-flung as his wanderings take him however, the relentless cycle of building and re-building gives him an ever-shifting terrain to engage with. There are a few locations that he has returned to time and again in his paintings, though rarely are they the same each visit.
One of his more remote subjects is the Rockaways, the narrow peninsula at the southernmost border between Brooklyn and Queens that protects Jamaica Bay from the Atlantic Ocean. As with nearby Coney Island - also a recurring subject - the relationship between the city and nature through the changing seasons is part of the appeal. Over the decades Lenaghan has returned to explore the peninsula’s beaches, boardwalks, residential enclaves and the de-commissioned military base at Fort Tilden, now a National Recreation Area. Much like the city at large, the Rockaways provide a microcosm of textures and settings to paint, from the rolling breakers at Rockaway Beach to the decaying, graffiti-covered structures remaining at Fort Tilden, where the barracks, munitions depots and batteries are now overgrown and as much part of the landscape as the brush and sand. There is a synergy here with the old industrial neighborhoods like Red Hook and Gowanus that are such a staple of Lenaghan’s paintings, particularly as many such neighborhoods were built up along the city’s waterways.
On a more recent foray to the Rockaways, he chose to turn to the bay side of the peninsula, looking past the Park Police Marine Unit from just east of Riis Landing, to a view of the Marine Parkway Bridge in the distance. Connecting Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to Jacob Riis Park, the bridge was built in 1937, under the aegis of Robert Moses and was intended to improve access to the popular summer destination. Unsurprisingly, the bridge has been a subject of Lenaghan’s before, the last time in 2015 from the Brooklyn end of the span. In that painting a working barge is visible, likely completing repairs to the bridge following damage it sustained during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The hurricane was devastating to the peninsula, stripping it of much of its protective dunes, destroying countless homes and displacing hundreds, leaving its parks closed for over a year while restoration was underway. Over ten years on, much has been rebuilt and repaired, however the work continues; the clear blue sky that Lenaghan paints belying the fragile recovery achieved so far.
See more recent paintings by the artist on his page.