#114 - Stanley Cold

Stanley Cold__6x8 oil__#114 of 154 works for Passing America: The Great Plains
Passing America: The Great Plains opens Friday, Oct. 7 in Lincoln. If you can come, LET ME KNOW! I will teach a workshop right after the opening, on Sat. through Mon.
For this exhibit, I created over 150 works, MOSTLY on the move as "drive-by" paintings. This one was painted on a train. The Amtrak leg between St. Paul, MN and Montana. I took this trip during the deepest part of winter in order to paint snow and not endanger my usual drivers! It was one of the best trips EVER! This one was painted near Stanley, ND on a bitter cold winter day. Under all that snow was a lonely, isolated little farm....resting.

I am slowly putting all 150+ paintings up on a web page. Click this link to see my first draft. the works are all here, but there is a LOT of editing to do. Browse around and let me know if something catches your eye...
http://virginiavaughan.com/gallery/

Meridian Highway

Tracks Out of Enid___8x10 oil on linen panel__for Passing America...but available!

Leaving Enid we had a spectacular sunrise, and I was able to start several canvases for "drive- by" paintings...this one is about the sky. As we drove I snapped photos between brush strokes, and this rail yard was my favorite foreground. I imagine the cars will be full of farm products in a few months, but this day things looked quiet there.
The route for this leg of my recent plains trip a few weeks ago was the Meridian Highway. We call it US 81, now, and it was EXACTLY what I'd hoped it would be: A BIG ROAD FOR FARMS! It passed through MANY towns, and unlike to towns in the Texas Panhandle Plains, these towns were ALIVE with commerce, mostly driven by agriculture. This Meridian Highway has a great history and even its own web site.

http://www.drivetheost.com/meridianhighway.html This web site says:

As the only primary north-south highway girding America’s heartland, the Meridian intersected with dozens of named trails, including the Old Spanish Trail at San Antonio; the Bankead Highway at Fort Worth; the Ozark Trails at Oklahoma City; the National Old Trails at Wichita; the Santa Fe Trail at Newton, Kansas; the Victory Highway at Salina, Kansas; the Lincoln Highway at Columbus, Nebraska; and the Yellowstone Trail, at Millbank, South Dakota.
In 1926 most of the 2,400-mile-long Meridian Road was converted into U.S. 81, an improved two-lane highway connecting Laredo to Joliette, North Dakota.