The Journey Of An Artist

Train Ghosts 16x20 Acrylics on canvas 1996

I did my first “real” painting in high school. At the time we had all done numerous creations in art class using pencils and water based paints, but at the time I felt that true artists used oil paints. I got some tutoring about the proper usage of oils and I managed to make a painting of a caribou copied from a calendar.

Over the course of the next four decades I painted with both oils and later acrylics the places I have been, the things that I have seen. The artwork that I produce is really about my journey; the old trucks that I have driven, the railroad my grandfather worked for, the cars that I restore, the interesting things that I have seen along the way

One of the subjects that I keep coming back to is the railroad. There is a good reason for that, as my grandfather worked for the Grand Trunk Pacific and later the Canadian National Railway for 50 years. The first train painting, done in acrylics, was of the 3716 ex CPR consolidation that pulled the BC Museum train through Creston (where I was living at the time) in 1978. This locomotive was the Royal Hudson’s backup for many years and now pulls a tourist train in Summerland.

In the 1990s I became fascinated by the abandoned Kettle Valley Railway in southern BC and made numerous trips to photograph the abandoned bridges and tunnels of the Myra Canyon near Kelowna and the Othello tunnels near Hope. A series of Train Ghosts paintings resulted, one of which participated in a group show at Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George BC. I have done of paintings with trains in the Myra Canyon as well

In 2002 I participated in a juried art show in Prince George BC and was a selected entry to continue on the BC Festival of the Arts in Vancouver. The painting that I did was a close up the one of the trucks of a VIA Rail passenger locomotive. That became part of a series of close up paintings.