'The Magic Hour: Part One' is my latest body of work and it focuses on car advertising. The Magic Hour is a term used by photographers to describe the glowing, soft light seen just after the sun has set. This time of day is a universal backdrop for car ads. This evening light gives the car and the landscape a warm, welcoming, 'magic' look.

The Magic Hour began with my mixed-media project 'Billboard' done in 2001. 'Billboard' dealt with the gulf between what car advertisers promise us and what the car itself actually delivers. Advertising promises that the car will carry us into a utopia of empty highways and open horizons as well as restore our precious youth. The car, instead, carries us into a world of frustration, gridlock and isolation.

In many ways I see cars and roads as a secret war on humanity. Cars and highways damage the environment, kill and injure thousands every year, or simply trap us alone in a steel cocoon. The rise of the SUV has spelled the beginning of a darker period in the age of the automobile. The SUV is a behemoth with which we conquer the earth and our fellow human beings.

My new paintings in The Magic Hour: Part One contain symbols of war and conflict such as swords, bows and arrows, military generals and armored knights. These personify the 'war' we fight with cars every day.

The first works in The Magic Hour series, 'Five Star Service' and 'President Cadillac' are self-portraits. These two pieces represent the military and civilian forces in my 'secret war'. In 'Five Star Service' I am dressed as a Patton-like general with car logos for medals. In 'President Cadillac' the presidential seal has been replaced with the 'Cadillac' crest. In another work, 'You Are Here', we see two figures seated in front of a mall billboard. They try to find their way into a car ad with a map and a disembodied steering wheel. The ad tells them they are 'there' but their reality tells them otherwise.

Two works that readdress the billboard image are 'Nighthawk' and 'Dragon'. 'Nighthawk' shows an image on a billboard of a couple in a desert. This picture-within-a-picture shows the couple aiming at an unknown target with a bow and arrow and a small model of a Mercedes SUV. The arrowhead is actually an ignition key. 'Dragon' shows another billboard in a nighttime landscape. On it we see a defeated knight with a broken sword. Behind him looms a Cadillac, Escalade, SUV. The mighty force of the automobile seems to have overtaken him.

My focus on this project has led me to conceive more works than I have time to complete for the June, 2004 show. I have decided to stretch this body of work out over two shows. The Magic Hour - Part Two will be a continuation on the themes of conflict seen in Part One and it will conclude my examination of car advertising and its impact on the modern mind.

Over the last hundred years, the car has gone from a curiosity to the dominating force in our daily lives. Few of us are unaffected by the webs of roads and the sea of cars that flow around us. The car is something that is so deeply ingrained in our lives that it has basically become an invisible force. We rarely think of the power it grants us or the hidden costs it exacts.

I believe the study of automobile advertising fits in well with my previous work. The Magic Hour: Part One continues to address our blind love of consumerism and our desire to attain the unreachable dreams and wishes that advertising offers. We must acknowledge the gulf that exists between the car advertising fantasy and the real world, or we are destined to drive headlong into it.

Chris Woods, 2004