Wednesday, July 8, 2009

The Shunting Yard


The Shunting Yard
$100


Oil on Canvas Board
8x10 inches
Spring of 1999
Railroad Avenue, Opelika, Alabama


I used to have a studio on Railroad Avenue in Opelika, Alabama. It was an old store and it sat literally 25 inches from a railroad shunting yard. When the trains were being moved about, the whole studio building shook. The train whistles would invariably shout out as soon as I answered the phone.

Now all this may sound awful if you don't like trains, but I do like them and always have. I like to look at them, ride on them, and paint pictures of them.

For this painting, all I had to do was haul my painting equipment out my front door and about 20 yards down the tracks. Luckily for me while I was painting this landscape, no trains came to pick up the boxcars. It was relatively peaceful.


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