South Elliott and Lafayette
2004
Transfer painting
20" x 28"
50.8cm x 71.1cm
Status & ownership
Private collection
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Contribution
South Elliott and Lafayette is an early and foundational example of the transfer painting logic that runs through Bolter's entire subsequent practice. Working with his own street photography rather than historical sources, it establishes the core formal relationship — flat painted colour fields cohabiting with a transferred photograph on a single canvas surface — that the A Colorful History series would refine and expand over the following two decades. The large painted sky as a structural device, pressing open space against photographic detail, is a formal decision consistent across the Brooklyn works and anticipates the later series' interest in the tension between paint and image. The work also carries the original conceptual ambiguity of the series title: the photograph may fade, the neighbourhood has changed, and the painting holds both possibilities in suspension.
About the work
Transfer painting of South Elliott and Lafayette Streets, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, fall 2004. Personal photograph on canvas via t-shirt transfer paper, with flat acrylic colour fields — painted sky above, buildings right, light post left. The corner's bulletproof bodega is long gone. A painting with a photo on it that doesn't exist anymore. South Elliott and Lafayette is one of a group of transfer paintings made in Fort Greene, Brooklyn in 2004, painted in Bolter's house around the corner from where the photograph was taken. The source image is his own — a personal street photograph of the intersection immediately outside his home, transferred to canvas using the t-shirt transfer paper technique that preceded the acrylic gel medium method he would develop for A Colorful History. The composition moves laterally rather than down a central axis: a crosswalk in the foreground, buildings painted to the right, a large light post to the left, and a flat painted sky holding the upper portion of the canvas. The sky — a recurring formal choice across the Brooklyn works — creates open space that presses against the photographic detail below, giving the image its gravity. On the corner was a bodega the neighbourhood called "bulletproof," named for the old-school protection setup requiring customers to pass money through a spinning transaction window. It no longer exists. The painting is, in Bolter's words, a painting with a photo on it that doesn't exist anymore. The Vanishing Landscape series title came from a Dutch art school assignment — students were given twenty minutes of perspective instruction and then told to draw without thinking about it, the exercise called "vanishing landscapes" in translation. Bolter found the assignment faintly absurd but kept the name, attaching it to a different idea: that the t-shirt transfer photograph might eventually fade, leaving only the paint behind. Years later a third meaning has arrived: the neighbourhoods themselves have changed beyond recognition. These works were made coming off the Art Collision tours, moving away from surrealism and large-format printing, and back to canvas and the immediate surroundings. The technique was rawer than what followed, but the logic — photograph and paint cohabiting on a single surface, addressed to an open future — runs directly through to the current practice.
Art/Official sessions
South Elliott and Lafayette — Art/Official session, June 1, 2026
This is a copy of the session record, June 1, 2026. Canonical URL: /sessions/south-elliott-and-lafayette-2026-06-01.
Transcript
- Artist
this is a fairly older work, part of the vanishing landscape series, which predated the colorful history. I was living in fort greene brooklyn and started making these paintings after the art collision series. this one is from the corner near my house at south elliott and lafayette streets
- Art/Official
Good timing on this one — Fort Greene feels like the origin point for a lot of what came later.
- Art/Official
Is this part of something ongoing, or does it feel more like a standalone moment within the Vanishing Landscape work?
- Artist
in a way its ongoing, it became the a colorful history series when I started using hisorical photos, but at this time was using my own photos that I would take
- Art/Official
That lineage makes sense — same transfer logic, different source material, and the shift to historical photos eventually gave it a broader frame. Where were you when you made this one?
- Artist
I painted it in my house around the corner from where the picture was taken



