MY RAILROAD ART

  

16 x 12 inch Illinois Railway Museum Poster by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

 Trains were some of the first things I drew when I was a little kid.  I had electric trains-- I still have them, actually, as well as the electric trains I inherited from my father.  I have always enjoyed looking at and riding on trains, and over the years as a landscape painter I had done a number of paintings that include some railroad imagery.  Then in the late 1990s an artist friend who was teaching a summer college course in on-site painting invited me to accompany his classes to various sites around Chicago because he knew I enjoyed painting on location.  One of the places we worked was the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois.  I was quite pleased with the painting I did there, and I thought the museum offered a lot of interesting subjects to paint, so I started going there 2 or 3 times each summer with my watercolors.  My on-site railroad art enabled me to get commissions for large railroad-themed murals in hotels in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.  I gave the series a name: AGE OF IRON: Railroad Art by George C. Clark, and showed paintings from it in various exhibitions, although I have not yet done an exhibition of railroad art exclusively.

When I did an exhibition at the Vanderpoel Art Museum in Chicago in 2010 I reproduced Saddle-tank Switch Engine on both the announcement card and a 16 x 12 inch poster for the show.  I sent a poster to the Railway Museum asking them to post it for their volunteer staff to see, and the manager of the museum store called me and asked me to make a poster for the IRM with the same image for them to sell to the public.  I self-published the poster for them, and then they invited me to show framed prints of some of my railroad art in their ArtCar display space and asked me to let them sell unframed prints in the museum store.  I was happy to oblige, and that's how I became sort of an "official" artist of the Illinois Railway Museum.  I used to paint there on quiet weekday mornings, but now they want me to come on busy weekends and be an "event" for their visitors.  The last time I was there painting I had the honor of having tourists ask me to autograph prints of my art they had just purchased!

Saddle-tank Switch Engine, 14 x 10 inch watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

My original watercolor painting Saddle-tank Switch Engine is currently on display with other examples of my work at the Longbranch Gallery, 203 Commerce Street in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.