Sloss Furnaces Oil on Canvas Panel For over ten years, I have been going to Birmingham to paint portraits. Every time I drove downtown I would look over at the old Sloss Furnaces and promise myself once again that I would go there and paint. Well, when I finally decided to paint them, it wasn’t the carefully planned landscape painting trip I envisioned, but a scene painted on a whim. The actual landscape came about when I found I had two unforeseen hours between meetings and I happened to have my paints with me. I also had my dog, Sully, who accompanies me sometimes on road trips. I take him along for the company. Although I had looked at the furnaces many times, I really had no idea how to get to them. I decided to just guess. After guessing my way to the wrong side of the park and to the wrong side of four railway tracks and a large fence, I could see the furnaces. Sully and I walked beside some huge warehouses and I set up in the shade by a loading dock. It turned out to be a great spot. I thought about how different it would have been to have painted this steel mill when it was functioning. The noise and fire and smell, would have made it seem to be alive. Now here it sits quietly, like one of the great Martian machines from the War of the Worlds movie after they too had fallen quiet in defeat. |
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