What's in a subject? What is the painting about anyway? To be honest I have never been able to buy into the whole meaning of the work of art thing. You know the stuff-"I painted this piece to represent the oppression of the working class by the industrial elite". All rot if you ask me. Most of these works of art take an enormous stretch of imagination to see what the artist means. So what if the painting is really a painting of a lake? Now that doesn't mean that it doesn't mean something, but it is something far more personal. For the artist it may be a favoured spot that was visited as a child, or a place that took his breath away when it was first viewed, and had to be recorded. To take the energy to apply paint to canvas, or pencil to paper does far more for me to capture a place or image than a photograph ever could.
There are many reasons for me to paint a particular subject. A drive to Banff last summer and a fabulous view of the moutains and the river and trees, and a picture is born. A hike through an abandoned section of railroad, and a desire to capture the bridges in paint. One pair of paintings that I especially like came about from a challenge. For many years I had entered a regional juried art show with little success, and one year one of the jurors said to be that the painting was nice, but what would make it special was if I would focus in on the subject more(it was of a train in front of Mt Robson)-like the ties or the track or something. I went home thinking initially that these art critics sure don't know anything about paintings, but as I thought about this I decided that it might be fun to do a painting of just the wheels of a locomotive. What a great idea it turned out to be, selected entry next art show, sold shortly after, and a similar painting commissioned by another collector.
The best bet for a successful painting is to paint the things that you know and love the most. For me that is trains, and parts of trains, bridges, aircraft, cars, okay any machine, water, rocks and moutains, and animals. I have been told in the past that I should paint local landscapes, or puppies and kittens or such rot, for they would certainly sell better. That may well be true, but I know for sure that the best art work that I make is painted of the things that I find the most interesting. So a painting of a puppy may be more popular than a painting of a steam locomotive, but I will enjoy painting the locomotive more and the final result will show that.
