The modern era was really kicked off with, first, the photograph, and then, the "moving pictures". Early film makers often used trains, as they showed movement like nothing else and could help captivate audiences. In 1903, Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery was considered a milestone in film technique. Buster Keaton's 1927 film, The General, was a great moving picture that used a steam locomotive more as a member of the cast than as a prop. Some of the greatest shots of steam locomotives in history are from Keaton's film, including a spectacular wreck, (using a real locomotive).

It is in these above mentioned ways that the early movies and the steam locomotive are directly linked together, and both symbols of true modernism. This painting is slightly older than some of the others, (produced in 2006), but it deals with the same ideas of movement and modernism.

Steam Modernism

Yet another painting, loosely based on the New York Central Hudson type locomotives. I continue working through ways to pull all my ideas together about modernism and what it all means in my paintings. This painting was inspired by a dream that I had. A brooding storm was overhead, and I was on a long, steam powered train, moving through a very barren landscape. This painting gets the general feeling of the dream across, while keeping with my ideas about steam modernism.

Southern Bridge #1

This painting is obviously much more representational than some of the other paintings. I set out to do it in stages and abstract it like the others, but I got so caught up in the beauty of the original black and white photo that I was using for reference that I never abstracted it greatly. The image I used for reference was a stock Southern Railway publicity photograph taken in the '20s - '40s. I did the painting again later with a different feel, but this is #1, probably the better of the two.

The sky is a brooding pink as the steam engine climbs to greater heights, traversing the tall stone bridge.

New Class For Modern Travel

There is, of course, more emotion in some paintings than others. This painting holds a lot of emotion for me, as I was going through a difficult time when it was painted. That is probably why I believe it is more successful that some of the others. While I want to leave the emotional interpretation of these paintings to the viewers, I would like to talk a little more about my process for this one.

New Class For Modern Travel was both carefully planned out and wonderfully spontaneous. As with A Night Train, I prepared a panel with a recessed pocket in which a smaller painting would fit. On the panel I first carefully painted a sign or advertisement with text reading, "New Class For Modern Travel". Under the text I drew a quick line drawing in paint of a Baltimore and Ohio locomotive, known as a president series pacific. I then painted the sign out. This incorporated a general advertising look of the 1920s, then almost completely covered by an abstract painting of the same train in all its modern glory. Then, in the reassessed pocket, the same train again from the same angle in a more representational form, which shows the pure beauty of the industrial and commercial design of the time. The word modern is easily discernible, and the words new and class are also legible if you look closely.

A Night Train

In this painting, I went with my idea of layering paintings to create a greater overall painting. This painting is on panel, and I added another dimention to this painting by cutting a hole in the panel in which I could perfectly fit a small painting. This is another dark painting, and the larger part of the painting creates the effect that a fast moving train has at night, where all that you really see is a faint impression of the locomotive rushing towards you, and with a flash of side-rods and a rush of steam, she is gone; disappeared into the cold night air. The smaller painting inside the larger painting is more representative of what you would see if you could freeze the moment in time; one frame in what could be a series.

This was a real event I witnessed, when I waited track side, on a frigid night, for the mighty Norfolk and Western class A to thunder through my mother's home town of Rome GA. This was about 1990, and I was quite young, but I remember it as if it happened yesterday.
This painting has actually been untitled until now. I might still change the title, but A Night Train seems fitting because it is the A at night.

 Close up on painting inside of painting, (Night Sound):

Permanently burned into my memory was the dark night when a large steam locomotive (N&W 1218) and her train rushed out of the night and passed within feet of where I was standing. I dreamed about this moment for years. I can still hear her whistle echoing against the surrounding hills. I was only 9 at the oldest, but the thought of this moment still sends chills down my spine.