Urban Rhythm

7/3/20 Maple Leaf neighborhood

Occasionally I am asked why I include unsightly utility poles and wires when it would be so easy to omit them from otherwise “pretty” sketches. My first thought is that, as an urban sketcher, I want to be “truthful to the scenes I witness,” and a street scene in Seattle without poles and wires would be suspect.

The larger reason, however, is that they lend a compelling rhythm, pattern and texture to a composition. Sometimes they are the composition.