Santa Fe No. 543 at the Illinois Railway Museum

Santa Fe No. 543 at IRM, 9 x 10 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

I painted this locomotive on static display outdoors at the Illinois Railway Museum.  Some rail fans like to see equipment portrayed all new and shiny-looking like it just rolled out of the factory.  For them I suggest that in an archive someplace there is a photograph of this locomotive taken the day it first rolled out of the factory.  If that's what they want, they should acquire a print of it and hang it on their wall.   As for myself, I'm an artist-- I paint what I see for the most part.  I like to paint old trains.  I find them all interesting: meticulously restored, not so restored, or rusting and abandoned out in the weather.  If I see rust, I paint rust.  If I see broken windows patched with plywood, that's what I paint.

I'll  confess there are a few artistic liberties I might take to improve a painting.   At IRM they use day-glow orange flexible plastic fencing to keep kids from climbing on the trains.  It doesn't bother me that they do that, but I never include that stuff in my art.  Nor do I depict the big white signage that identifies and describes the history of the various locomotives and rolling stock on display.  I usually paint locomotives in the setting where I found them, as is the case with No. 543.   Sometimes, however, if I feel an engine will look better silhouetted against foliage and sky rather than the big dark locomotive that was really behind it, I will make that change.  Trains are movable, after all, and can and do move around the Railway Museum's compound.  And more than once I have painted the old sand tower into a painting to add visual interest although it really wasn't visible from where the rest of the painting was made.