Beans in the Belfry - A Black and White Oil Painting

A small sketch of the door of a coffee shop in black and white paint

Beans in the Belfry. 4x6, oil on linen. 2013.  Black and white paint.

This is a study I made of Beans in the Belfry, a coffee shop in Brunswick, MD, which is 5 minutes from my studio.  I've been trying to paint this scene for a couple of years but I couldn't make it work.  For this attempt I tried 1) making it really small and 2) using just white paint and black paint which I premixed into five piles, each with a different value.

I think the black and white brings out some of the identity of the Victorian-era building, which is a re-purposed church.  This reminds me of growing up in a part of Yorkshire where all of the old buildings had been turned black from a century's worth of air pollution.


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