A Productive Day at the Illinois Railway Museum

Chicago Streetcar Barn, Illinois Railway Museum, 14 x 10 inch watercolor by George C. Clark  AVAILABLE

In 2010, after I had been invited to create a poster and railroad prints for the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois, I was also invited to come out on a busy weekend in September to paint on site and be an event for museum visitors.  Because the trains are moved around from time to time, I went out there on a sunny day a week ahead with my camera to pick some good painting locations, both indoors and out, September weather being what it is.  The day I came to paint turned out to be really overcast and threatening to rain, so I set up in the corner of the car barn where old Chicago street cars are displayed.  That's a "Green Hornet" streamlined car from the 1940s in the foreground, a 1970s "Skokie Swift" train behind it, and an old car from the 1920s or earlier in the distance.  The overcast light was actually better for painting than it been the week before, when bright sunlight had been coming in the open doors to the left.  I finished the painting on site, then took a break for a late lunch.

Burlington Northern No. 3007, 14 x 12 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark  AVAILABLE

After lunch, although it was still overcast it hadn't actually rained, so I decided to work outdoors.  I liked the front of this locomotive, but it had looked better as a painting subject in sunlight.  I set up in front of it with a folding card table and a stool and spent about an hour and a half doing a fairly tight ink drawing on watercolor board.  The rain held off until the drawing was almost finished and I had to pack up and leave.  At home I used the photographs I had taken in sunlight as a guide when I added my watercolors.

New Limited Edition Giclee Print Available

Rust, signed and numbered giclee print by George C. Clark from an original painting that is now in the permanent collection of the Illinois State Museums.    AVAILABLE

This new archival print will be on view this weekend at a 2-day exhibition and sale at ARTS ON ELSTON Gallery, 3446 N. Albany (at the intersection of Elston Avenue) in Chicago.  Gallery hours are Friday, Dec. 6 from 6 to 10pm and Saturday, Dec. 7 from 2 to 6pm.

The image is centered on a 12 x 16 inch sheet of 100% rag Hahnemühle paper with about an inch of white margin all around.  Each print from this edition of 30 is signed and numbered by the artist in pencil on the light green area at the bottom of the image so it can be displayed as is in a 12 x 16 inch frame or matted for display in a larger frame without covering the signature and edition number.  Unframed prints are $75 and prints framed 12 x 16 are $120.  Rust was painted on-site at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois. 

A New Arrival at the Illinois Railway Museum

A New Arrival at the Railway Museum, 14 x 10 inch watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

One day a few years ago I went out to the Illinois Railway Museum with my watercolors and found this old interurban car on two bright yellow flatcars parked in front of the East Union Station.  The body of the car was mounted on one flatcar and its heavy wheel trucks on another.  I sat down on one of the benches outside the station and made this painting.

My Illinois Railway Museum Poster

16 x 12 inch poster illustrated with the watercolor painting Saddle-tank Switch Engine by George C. Clark

In 2010 I had an exhibition of my landscape, figure and railroad paintings at the John H. Vanderpoel Art Museum.  I made hundreds of 5 x 7 inch announcement cards and 20 16 x 12 inch posters to publicize that exhibition, all featuring my watercolor Saddle-tank Switch Engine, which I had painted on-site at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois.  I sent a poster to the Railway Museum and asked them to post it where the museum's volunteer workers could see it.  A week later I got a phone call from the manager of the IRM museum store asking me to make a poster for them to sell with the same image on it.  I self-published the poster above and it is available for $10 at the museum store when it is open daily from Memorial Day to Labor Day plus weekends in May and September.    

An Old Florida Keys Railroad Bridge

The Old Bridge,  Bahia Honda Key, 6.5 x 8 inch ink an d colored pencil by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

In the early 20th century a railroad was built from the Florida mainland to Key West by linking the chain of islands with causeways and long bridges.  When the railroad was badly damaged by a hurricane in 1935 the state of Florida bought the right of way and turned it into a two-lane highway.  Truss bridges like this one built to carry a single railroad track were too narrow to accommodate two lanes of pavement on the trackbed, so a new roadbed was laid across the tops of the steel trusses.  In the 1970s a new highway bridge (visible behind the palm tree at the right) was constructed and this old bridge was abandoned.  A section of the bridge was removed to prevent access from Bahia Honda State Park, where I made this drawing, to the part of the old bridge that is unsafe because it is no longer maintained.  This is a page from a sketchbook I took to South Florida a few months ago.       

Santa Fe No. 92 at the Illinois Railway Museum

Santa Fe No. 92, ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

A Santa Fe diesel locomotive in "warbonnet" paint on outdoor display at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois.

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.