how long to paint sistine chapel
It took Michelangelo four years to actualize his masterpiece murals that awning the beam of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.
A Manhattan artisan believes he can charm the aerial images in aloof two months on the beam of his awkward flat apartment.
“My accomplished activity I’ve been bedeviled with the Sistine Chapel,” Alex Gardega said Wednesday afore aggressive a ladder to acrylic the aboriginal lines.
“This will be an exact copy.”
Gardega, 43, has helped adorn the city, creating murals and bottle works for churches and celebrated buildings. He additionally has done assets for celebrities like actors Matt Dillon and Drew Barrymore.
But his own accommodation has been continued neglected.
“I get paid a lot to accomplish people’s environments nice, and my own looks like a mess,” he said.
Holding a photo of the abbey beam for advertence adjoin his palette of oil paints, Gardega corrective the outline of the iconic Creation of Adam angel over his bed in an hour.
“It’s demography shape,” Gardega crowed as he corrective the duke of God about affecting Adam’s hand. “I apperceive my anatomy!”
He’s been bedeviled with Renaissance artists back his mother bought him a $6 book from the bounded bazaar back he was a boy in alone Texas.
He alone out of the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in the 90s because he couldn’t allow it, but anon begin assignment as an artist. He’s created bottle panels for the elevators in the Chrysler architecture and windows categorical with images of saints for a Queens mausoleum.
“I get the jobs added bodies can’t do,” he said.
He was befuddled off stride back his father, alone in his 60s, died accidentally of a affection advance aftermost year.
“I absent my mojo as far as art,” Gardega admitted. “I corrective a mural and it wasn’t up to snuff.”
The mural, a replica of the starry beam at Grand Central Terminal, was for the home amphitheater allowance of a millionaire applicant on Continued Island.
“He wasn’t happy,” Gardega said. “I went into a coast of depression.”
He and the above applicant aren’t speaking, but Gardega sees his Sistine Abbey claiming as a attempt at redemption.
“I aloof appetite to booty some time for myself and get into my own body for a while,” he said. “I accept to prove myself again.”
Another client, Johnny Hayes, buyer of Harley’s Smokeshack, a afresh opened barbecue collective in East Harlem, is ponying up $2000 to awning Gardega’s supplies.
As a renter, Gardega worries about the ultimate fate of his new work.
“I’m basically painting a $100,000 mural in this apartment,” he said. “Are they aloof activity to white it out back I leave?”
bpaddock@nydailynews.com