Most of the paintings that I have done have been the result of an interesting image that I have seen that I have wanted to capture. I usually work from photographs that I use as a reference, and most often a photograph that I have taken will resonate in such a way that I feel that I have to paint it.
Such was the situation with a recent painting that I did. As many of you that follow my work may know, I am rather obsessed with railroads and trains, especially steam locomotives and bridges, so when the Canadian Pacific Railway put together a train with their restored Hudson steam locomtive to tour the province to help celebrate the 150th anniversary, well I had to go and see it. I was hoping that I would be able to book passage on the train, as they had allowed this on previous excursions, and so I convinced a freind that he should come with me to southern BC on a photo trip-mainly so that he could drive and pick me up at the next stop. So off we go to Cranbrook where it was scheduled to be the next day.
We arrived late in the afternoon, found a hotel and went to eat. As we left the restaurant we heard the locomotive entering the town, and we went to meet it. It was well dark by then, and there was no pictures to be had, but we did get a departure time for the next morning , but learned that there was no passage to be had on this trip. Dissapointment all around, but we would make the best of it. The next day was a beautiful clear day, and we got to the railyard an hour before departure(due to the fact that there was a time zone difference, or we would have actually been several minutes late), and many great pictures were taken. Then when it left we followed it to the small town of Yahk, with the highway paralleling the railroad in many areas. Many more great pictures and videos were taken and we enjoyed the celebrations in Yahk as well.
What has all of this to do with creating a painting? Well it is sometimes about lucky accidents. None of the pictures that were taken that morning were worthy of a painting. Even though the lighting was great, the action and backdrops wonderful, nothing had that special something. We had had fun, but that was all we were getting out of the trip it appeared. From Yahk to Creston there are very few places where the tracks are visable from the highway, so I told my friend that I knew of a place that may make for some nice pictures. So we drove ahead of the train, but by quite a sizeable time frame as it turned out.
A few miles to the east of Creston there is a vertical walled canyon carved by the Goat River. This Canyon is crossed by a long road bridge, which in turn is crossed by the railraod on an even longer bridge. So this is where we set up camp. Steam locomotives attract numerous fans, and so we were soon joined by a number of others of a like mind. We paced around, looking for the best photo locations, and kept looking to the east waiting for the train. Before it could arrive the sky darkened, and it began to rain. It soon was raining too hard for us to maintain our spots on the road bridge and we had to seek shelter. Many went under the road bridge, while I tried under the train bridge. Not very good as it turned out(open deck, water goes right through) so I had to take refuge in the car. I could see a short distance down the track, but the way it was raining it wouldn't matter when it came. After what seemed forever the rain let up, and I risked getting out of the car, and I looked back down the track, and there was the damned train, mere feet from the bridge. I dashed out on the highway bridge and snapped a couple of pictures as the locomotive tiptoed across the bridge. No one else had even seen the train until it had almost gone.
When I looked at the images on the camera I was crestfallen. The camera had been inadvertantly changed to manual settings, and the image was horribly overexposed and out of focus. There was no sky visable at all. And to top it all off a car crossed the bridge just then, and I thought ruined everything. But when I returned home I kept looking at the picture and liked what I saw none the less. It was actually a nice compostion, and the car actually complimented everything, so I made a print, and set to work. I had to create the sky, and another friend suggested that I attempt to capture the mood of the day, so I painted a very dark sky with sheets of rain visable. I had to use other pictures to reference the locomotive, but the trees, well they did not matter, for they never look like the photos anyway. I also had to fake parts of the railroad bridge, as they were lost in my horrible photo, and I decided to change the generic car to a red version of my own car. It had to be red to work with the train. As it turns out it is one of my favourite pieces, and I think that I have managed to capture a mood from the day.
