Big Caboose

For now I think I'm done with this view of the caboose, until this summer.  But I did want to do this larger one.  I like how the bridge thing balances the caboose thing, an intentional, hidden symmetry. 12x24 inches, oil on panel.  

Working In The Shadows

As the preparatory drawing reveals, I wanted to work in the shadows, and I put a lot on my plate. The flying diagonals enliven the permanently parked train.  Heritage Park, North Adams, MA. 9x12 inches, oil on panel, charcoal on paper.

Brooklyn Camouflage

This is a view of Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.  The elevated tracks for the Long Island Railroad are at left.  The building at right is painted sky blue so that it almost blends into the sky, which it what strongly appealed to me.  Brooklyn camouflage?   12x16 oil on panel.

Trains, Monet, and Understanding a Poem

There's a precedent for putting a train on a bridge in a painting.  Monet at Argenteuil did several paintings with the train on a bridge.  In this painting it is the Franklin Avenue Shuttle crossing Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a 12x16 oil on panel.

I came across an interesting quote in Helen Vendler's  book, The Odes of John Keats:

"I know no greater help to understanding a poem than writing it out in longhand with the illusion that one is composing it--deciding on this word rather than another, this arrangement of its masses rather than another, this prolonging, this digression, this cluster of senses, this closure."

That is the attitude that I have when drawing or painting, trying to understand what I am looking at, and creating an illusion that I am composing with sensibility what it is that is there.