Illinois Central

Illinois Central, 40 x 50 inch oil and pencil on paper painting by George C. Clark
Collection: McDonald's Corporation, Oak Brook, Illinois

Illinois Central is an example of a railroad painting I made and sold long before I realized that railroad  images would be an important sub-genre of my art.  I related in some detail on my Traveler's Sketchbook blog how, after I won a major award at the Art Institute of Chicago's "Chicago and Vicinity" exhibition in 1978, I was invited by an Art Institute curator to be a featured artist in a new series of shows at the museum's Art Rental and Sales Gallery, each of which would feature the work of a painter and a sculptor.  This exhibition would feature my large landscapes on paper, augmented by some smaller landscapes and watercolors from my Traveler's Sketchbook Series, and would open in February of 1980.  

The museum borrowed my prize-winning Indiana Cropduster from its purchaser (the international accounting firm KPGM) and I did six more really big landscapes for the show.  Actually, only five of the new ones made it into the exhibition because I sold one to a collector from Glencoe while the Chicago and Vicinity Show was still up.  Looking back, I realize now that of the seven, two depicted railroad tracks with no trains visible, and two others showed trains, so I guess that railroad art even then was a part of my consciousness. 

I got the subject for Illinois Central when my wife Pat and I drove downstate to Kampsville, Illinois to take part in an archaeological dig sponsored by the Northwestern University Archaeology Field School and the Smithsonian Institution.  For much of the route between Chicago and Springfield the interstate highway parallels the main line of the Illinois Central Railroad.  Although the days of the Panama Limited were long past, I thought the railroad would still make an interesting subject for a painting and I began to take photos of trackside features and passing trains out of the car window while Pat drove.  Illinois Central was cobbled together from several of those pictures.

Disappointingly, none of my big landscapes sold at the Art Rental and Sales Gallery show, although I sold several of the smaller pieces.  (One of my teachers at the School of the Art Institute had been featured in the previous show in that space and I was pleased to note that my work outsold his both in numbers and dollar value.  A petty observation, I know.)  Most of them have since been sold in other venues, and Illinois Central was the first to go.  McDonald's Corporation was looking for art for their corporate headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois, and they announced a competition for art with the themes of food, food service, or agriculture.  I entered Illinois Central and eventually received a letter informing me that I had won second prize, which was a purchase award for less than I would have priced the painting in a commercial gallery show but more than I would have realized from a gallery sale after deducting commission, so I sold them the painting.  It didn't hurt that this made the third well-known international corporate collection (after KPMG and the Quaker Oats Company) that I could add to my resume either.

I'm sorry that the image posted here is a little soft.  I had it scanned from a 35mm slide that I shot myself, and that's what the slide looks like, just a little bit out of focus.