Eliot Greenwald: Notes from the artist on Night Car

My first Night Car painting was made last summer while I was primarily working on an ongoing series of portraits. A left over canvas that I would use up paint on at the end of a studio session ended up having an image of a boxy car that was vanishing on it.  Another one of these canvases ended up with two vague ‘moons’ on it.  The car I painted resembled planet earth. Those were the first times some of the basic imagery appeared.  

I had my good friend and artist Mike Taylor over for a beer and a hang, which always would inevitably have some sort of ‘studio visit’ aspect to it.  After showing him the new portraits I had made, I picked up one of my leftover “paint”  paintings and held it up to him. “ Ehh, ehh, whatcha think!? It’s Night Car, cool right!?”  The response I got from Mike was short of barely enthusiastic. I attempted to convince him of the ‘coolness’ of these paintings by explaining the entire mythology, which I made up on the spot and which included the name given to Night Car’s counterpart, Dweeby Dimlight.  This didn’t seem to convince him of the paintings’ merit, but it did make him laugh, which was all I really wanted anyway.