Painting of Inman Square in Cambridge, MA. I did a Porter Square painting last spring that I was pretty proud of and since I love geographic series, I thought I might do a series of semi-fantastical interpretations of several Cambridge/Somerville-area squares (Davis, Inman, Union, Central, Kendall, etc).
Inman is the next closest to us and seemed like the logical next choice, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find anything inspiring about it; no creative adaptations or whimsical interpretations of local details came to mind. Among the squares listed above, Inman features the fewest cherished memories or favorite places.
So naturally I started to fixate on it, and it basically turned into a challenge: if I could find inspiration in Inman, I could find inspiration in anything. This resulted in almost a dozen drafts imagining the square as, variously, an old English port; the site of invasion by steampunk monsters; a waterpark; a sunset.
Finally I just needed Inman Square out of my head. It’s not going anywhere. I can always come back to it. The result of this “check-the-box” mentality was, predictably, a pretty “check-the-box” painting. I’m glad it’s done.
