This painting is about darkness; about the clang of the coal scoop on the firebox door; about the cold of the night and the heat of steam in an industrial wasteland. It is a bit like something from a nightmare, (or a very dark fantasy). A dream so thick, it could be cut with a knife, like the slitting of a throat under the dim yellow street lamp in this "sinking boardwalk town". Painted in 2003, I was listening to a lot of Tom Waits at the time, and thinking about the overwhelming effect over industrialization can have on a land scape. I abstracted the factory and bridge by having everything bent and swaying on the canvas. I was also trying continue in the vein of some small drawings I was doing at the time. I felt it was still important to post this painting because my Train paintings have gone through many different transformations as a body. While each individual painting evolves as I work on it, the body of work also has evolved. I was still dealing with many of the same themes, although the idea of using trains as a symbol of modernism had not completely flushed itself out yet.
