Ten Years Gone By

Its hard to believe that ten years have gone by since I painted "The Broiler" and "Hennepin Bridge". I can still remember it well. I was commissioned to paint the Henn/Bridge in early 2001. This was the piece that would eventually begin the branding earthquake that would soon be called "Michael Birawer Art". I remember that the client wanted this as a gift for his wife on their one year anniversary. He specifically wanted to have the downtown in the picture.
At this point, I was painting more directly what I was seeing in real life. So I did not put the Grain Belt bottle cap in the composition. It is almost like you are viewing the scene from the perspective of what the bottle cap would be seeing. Over the years my style has loosened up, and if I were to paint this scene again, I would probably put the ole bottle cap in.

The story behind "The Broiler" painting was a little different. By the time I finished the Henn/Bridge, I immediately embarked on working on a new piece to be entered into the St. Paul Winter Carnival by February 1st. I remember sending them some slides around November/December of some older (less polished) scenes I had painted years earlier as sort of a place holder (so they could review my application). When I found out they excepted me for an exhibit the the 2001 Annual Winter Carnival Art Exhibit, I kinda put it off until the last minute.

I had to create a painting that they could display at the Landmark Center. And I was under the gun, to say the least. I had less then two weeks before the work had to be delivered, and I had no idea what I was going to paint. And whatever it was going to be of, it had to be done quickly.
And since we lived in St. Paul (Mac/Groveland), I decided to pick the St. Clair Broiler as my subject.

I parked my car outside of the S.C.B. and sat there sketching it out. I wanted to make sure it had all of the correct details. The problem was, I was there so long and constantly looking in at the restaurant, that a S.C.B. employee came out to my car and told me I was making the patrons nervous and wanted to know what I was doing there parked for so long. I explained to her I was drawing a picture of the building and that I was going to be leaving very shortly. They were very nice and understanding about it all. I had to leave without my sketch completely drawn out. So I ended up bringing my old art school Minolta manual camera out, and took a couple of shots of the place (This has now become the standard process for all of my paintings, except now I use of digital camera, of course).

Then there I was, in my dark and dingy basement in St. Paul with my canvas sitting there on the easel all blank. I said to myself, "Hmm... How the hell am I gonna approach this one". So instead of using the process I did for Henn/Bridge (which took me two months to complete), I needed to rethink everything. So instead of drawing it out on a white primed canvas, as I had always done before, I decided to paint over the white with black. Then I drew it out. I kept everything very square and geometric (unlike the previous Henn/Bridge). The colors were flattened and everything was outlined in a black feathered contour. This was also the first painting where I introduced texture. The 3 foot x 4 foot painting ended up taking me one week to complete, and ever since. "The Broiler" had become the turning point in it's basic process and style. It really was the true birth of the branded "city scene" style which each following painting was based.