A great art teacher, mentor and friend once told me to “paint where you live, paint what you see and paint what you love”. I’ve tried to follow that advice over the years. When you live on the high plains of west Texas, the grain elevator is ubiquitous. Every small rural town with a railroad track has one. Some are big, some are small. Some are fancy concrete, others are sheet metal. But they all harken back to a time when ground water was abundant and grain sorghum was rotated annually with cotton.
“West Texas Skyscraper” depicts one of Goodpasture Grain’s elevators in Ropesville, Texas and pays homage to that era.
This painting won the “Combined Donor X Award” in the National Watercolor Society 96th International Exhibition in 2016. It was also one of the paintings that contributed to my signature status in that organization. It will always be special to me.
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