Prior to making this painting of a gas meter the artist had been using his entire studio room as subject matter. The image of the gas meter was a lead-in to making additional paintings that monumentalized the everyday man-made objects in his studio. Living in an industrial loft in New York City offered many such objects of interest.
About the artist’s Broome Street Studio period: In 1966, fresh out of graduate school, the artist moved to his first real working studio in an industrial loft building at 389 Broome Street in New York City. After living on the second floor for a year, he then moved up to the third floor. Make-shift living in an industrial loft space was a new and fascinating experience and his immediate interior environment became the subject matter for much of his artwork during this period. Paintings done in and about his studio environment were shown in his first major solo New York exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1968.