The New York Beautification Project consisted of forty oval landscape paintings in oils that I painted directly onto existing graffiti sites throughout New York City, without permission, from the summer of 1999 to the early spring of 2001. Each painting was approximately five by seven inches in size (17.8 x 12.7 cm). I discontinued painting and scraped off the paintings whenever anyone objected to them. My apologies to all the graffiti artists whose work I was unable to credit because I didn’t know their names. I did my best to find them. Almost all of the photography documenting the project was by Jan Baracz.

To see photographs and read an account of what happened at and around each site, please click here. 

These photographs and texts were published in 2005 by Gregory R. Miller & Co. as The New York Beautification Project, which has recently been reissued as a paperback. To purchase the book, click here.