Trains
I began painting trains at Nimrod Hall “en plein air,” i.e., on-site in the open air. One day my friend Margaret and I traveled to an old train yard nearby at Clifton Forge, Virginia, seeking new subjects to paint. The yard was full of abandoned, rusty, deteriorating train cars. I quickly determined I wanted to spend more time with this visually fascinating subject!
Regrettably, from my perspective, a few years later Clifton Forge began transforming the area into a train museum, which involved cleaning up the salvageable train cars and moving those that were unredeemable to other places.
So I began searching out the unredeemables in other places in Virginia (Richmond, Staunton) and elsewhere (Baltimore, Denver). Whenever I traveled, I searched out sites (even train museums!) where one could still find old cars.
Since I have traveled for many years to Oaxaca, Mexico, I scouted them out there, finding wonderful graffiti-covered abandoned trains. But guess what? After a few years, the old train yard was transformed, as at Clifton Forge, into a train museum, and most of the rusty old cars were cleaned up or removed. I even traveled to Bolivia, specifically to visit its famous train graveyard on the high salt flats. What I saw there I later used in a series of paintings.
I love not only the rusty layers of paint but the fading graphics and the marvelous graffiti that invariably show up on train cars. It seems that the sides of train cars are irresistible canvases for graffiti artists! And I love the geometrics of the cars themselves, especially the cars broadside, with their windows, ladders, vertical ridges, and miscellaneous square and rectangular attachments.
To me, trains are as close as you can get to abstraction, but they are real. Beyond their artistic appeal, trains are truly magical in some inexpressible and intangible way. There is an unexplained exoticism about trains that arises out of our memories, their historical importance in this country, and their connection with travel everywhere.
All of my train paintings are oil on panel and, unless otherwise noted, are unframed. The unframed works are edge-painted so they require no framing.
Train Skeleton #1, Bolivia — 25 x 28 — $1000
Train Skeleton #2, Bolivia — 20 x 36 — $1000
Train Skeleton #3, Bolivia — 24 x 35.75 — $1200
Train Skeleton #4, Bolivia — 24 x 48 — $1500
Train Skeleton #5, Bolivia — 26 x 28 — $1000
Train Skeleton #6, Bolivia — 24 x 36 — $1200
Train Skeleton #7, Bolivia — 24 x 36 — $1200
Indian, Bolivia — 19.75 x 35.5 — $975
Mexican Child — 25 x 36 — $1200
La Niña, Mexico — 36 x 48 — $1800
Box Car Interior, Mexico — 36 x 58 — $1800
Sleeper #2, Mexico — 24 x 48 — $1500
Silver End Car — 30 x 24 — $1000
Chevron — 28 x 24 — $950
Santa Fe — 24 x 29.5 — $1000
Reflections — 24 x 27 — $950
118C — 30 x 36 — $1200
Blue Wheel — 24 x 24 — $950
Window — 36 x 23.5 — $1250
Gold Rust — 24 x 30 — $950
Leaving Chicago — 28 x 36 — $1200
Silver — 28 x 25 — $950
Red Reflections — 24 x 36 — $950
Acca Yard #3 — 24 x 48 — $1500
Acca Yard #1 — 24 x 48 — $1500
Jacaronda, Mexico — 24 x 48 — $1500
Green & Silver — 19 x 27 — $750
Columbus & Greenville — 24 x 32 — $1000
Grey Train Car — 15 x 24 — $525