I had the idea when making this painting to use video stills as reference and inspiration. There is a scene in the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, where a boy is struck and killed by a train. The locomotive used in that scene was none other than Atlanta and West Point 290. I paused the movie on the exact frame where the locomotive supposedly kills the boy. I uploaded it into my computer, doctored it in a photo program, and printed it out and large as the low resolution video still would allow me so that I could use it for reference. I could have easily taken a photograph myself to use as a reference, but I thought using the film still made it a lot more interesting, therefore adding more meaning to the final project. Why is something so appealing often so deadly?
