Railroad Trestle landscape art for sale
on Oct 25 by alinquist55
Beautiful midwestern cityscape of hills, trees, roads and a train tressle
RAILROAD TRESTLE, canvas size: 24” x 36”
Railroad Trestle shows a railroad bridge as it crosses a four-lane road. The four-lane road dips under the bridge and then rises towards the horizon, creating a nice view of the surrounding suburban woodlands. Fall is starting to show. Two billboards, one on each side of the road, provide visual contradiction to the direction of the track, as does the road.
As I started to paint plein air, I quickly realized that I would have to start painting beyond my immediate neighborhood. The first places to look would be along the routes I regular ran in my life – especially the ones I drove on my way to work and back. The visual highlight of my work route was this dramatic drop belong a rail trestle. While the view is nice along the road, it’s the view from above that was particularly nice. It was also my first attempt to paint moving cars on a road.
As much as I like landscapes and truly enjoy painting trees and greenery, It was the visual and thematic oppositions that attracted me to this view. Although the railroad and its trestle seem to be the primary objects of this painting, it’s really the contrast between all of these man made objects and the surrounding suburban countryside. This is a theme that usually attracts me but its hard to find scenes that have this much linear opposition at the same time. The train track and the road are at 90-degree angles. Also, the billboards create other 90-degree angles. They also jut above the horizon. They are small enough not to completely dominate the landscape but the dramatic colors and the billboards’ placement give the landscape contrasting flair. The graffiti on the trestle compliments the sketchy way the trees were painted.
This painting took two autumns to paint. Since this view reflects a mid morning scene, I could only work on it on periodic weekend mornings from the edge of a parking lot of a grocery store. I chose not to represent advertisements in any realistic way much in the same way I chose to keep the cars rather generic.
Because of the costs involved, I rarely competed in art shows but I did enter this painting in a California art show and won an award. Of course, the award money did not offset the costs of shipping this work to and from the show.
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