Oil on panel
18" x 24" x 3/4 in
2023
 
This is a painting of the promenade deck in a crew area of the SS United States. It was not accessible to passengers. When the ship was towed to Turkey in 1994 to have the asbestos removed, someone sold some of the railings for scrap. 
 
In the upper left you can see one of the two funnels- smokestacks. One reason that the SS United States was so swift is that the superstructure was lightweight aluminum and not steel. A sheet of aluminum was fastened around a cylindrical steel frame. Metal expands and contracts with fluctuations in temperature, so you can see the areas where the sheet metal is fastened to the frame: Those are the stripes where the surface was more stable, so the paint hasn't flaked off. The funnels were originally red, white, and blue. The yellow is a layer of primer under the red paint. The hat on top of the funnel directed the smoke away from passengers.