Tulsa Monument Company Building

Built in 1936, one cannot miss the striking Tulsa Monument Company Building located at 1735 E. 11th Street on historic Route 66. It was designed by Harry H. Mahler to simulate the appearance of a monument. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. You can read more about it and many other historic places in Tulsa by visiting the Tulsa Preservation Commission website.

Earlier this month a recently completed extensive architectural survey of downtown Tulsa was published.  The survey revealed 14 potential National Register historic districts downtown with nearly 150 buildings becoming eligible for historic rehabilitation tax credits.  Read about this exciting survey here.

Followers of my blog know that I'm very keen on capturing the beauty of Tulsa's architecture as subjects of my paintings.  I know that I can never hope to paint all the places here that I find interesting, but I'm going to keep trying!

From time to time individuals ask me why I've chosen a particular building to paint.  Very often it has to do with the way the light of day created a feeling about the place.  As my travels around downtown often occur early in the morning, many of the scenes reflect that light. Usually they're devoid of people, and I feel that this "quiet" allows the viewer to really focus on the structure and hopefully get a sense of what I appreciate about the place.  I strive to keep in focus what it was specifically that appealed to me the moment I snapped the photo and then interpret that through paint.

The particular day that I shot the photo of the Monument Building was a very bright, clear Autumn day.  The sky was intensely blue and against that dark backdrop the white structure was very dramatic.  As I was planning this painting, done again in acrylics, this time on 8 x 10" prepped mdf panel, I thought about what the place was all about, the history of it and chose a very subdued, limited palette with strong value contrasts. The crisp, strong vertical and horizontal elements of the building could have been portrayed with great accuracy and careful draftsmanship. I felt like that approach might strip away the personality of the building and chose a compromise between accuracy and artistic license.