This is the third of four drawings I did of Detroit, based on explorations on Google Street View. Detroit made it big as a car-manufacturing city, but I don’t think the cars in this view are an indication of great current affluence. The central downtown part of the city is visible ahead, and while that is the area where we assume lots to be going on all we can see from here is a merging of buildings into one big grey area whose silhouette goes up and down much as it does in a distant mountain range. We can feel a sense of wildness and mystery when looking at a distant mountain range – beyond our reach, an unknown, as if in another world – and I get the same feeling with a city skyline like this one.

Details: Pen; 2016; 30 cm x 21 cm. Unframed: original £200; print £30.

Included in the gallery Buildings / Urban