Signals (i) rough draft - John Swogger, 2010 (pencil on paper)
Signals (i), work in progress - John Swogger, 2010 (acrylic on board)
Posted a load of photographs and sketches to the Flickr group for “The Way” – the result of a rainy morning poking around the edges of the station, mostly from the far side of the tracks, in Oswestry’s new Coney Green park (official name: Wilfred Owen Green). The park itself is pretty impressive – okay, it’s been trashed by kids playing in it, but did you know it’s got a replica of Silbury hill, complete with a holed stone at the top and a maze in the shape of the carving on the Hollywood Stone. Amazing! I had no idea the land art was there, and it’s less than a stone’s throw away from my studio!
Anyway, moped around the park and the station in the rain and collected a bunch of reference photographs for various paintings. Worked up some of the ideas into sketches during the afternoon, and then this evening got started on the first painting – a small (32x32cm) painting “Signals (i)”. I’ve been working on the idea of railways as gateways, and the signalposts as gateposts. The park’s Silbury hill and holed stone was too good a motif not to include, and so it’s there, in the background, underneath a lowering sky. The large round object on the left is a favourite form I’ve found: a GWR signal post finial, used here and there as post-finials on signb0ards, etc. And then there are the railway signals themselves on the right.
Signals all showing the way?
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