The complexity of the New York City Subway has fascinated me since I first encountered the system in 2002 and compelled me to create a painting to help me understand why the New York Subway system is the way it is, starting from the very beginning.

Beginning with the Elevated and trains in Manhattan and the existing Railroads in Brooklyn around middle of 19th Century, and through the unification of the 3 subway companies in 1940, I chronicled with paint the changes to the New York Subway System on the same painting, pdated it as changes were implemented by whiting-out lines that were eliminated, and changing the colors of the existing lines when a new color coding scheme was implemented. 

Before any major subway overhaul that requires a substantial reworking on the painting, I took slides to document the painting after every change. With a total of 10 images gathered, of a painting that bears little resemblance to its starting phase, I turned them into a morphing animation to display how the painting evolved over the one year period of its creation. By watching the animation, viewers will not only able to witness how the subway system and the painting evolved, but to observe how I eventually took a different route with the way I completed the painting. The current image was far from what I had in mind at the beginning.