RAILROAD DINING, ART, AND CULTURE IN REVIEW BY JAMES D. PORTERFIELD
Dallas Streamliners, Acrylic on Canvas, 24”x36” ©2012 John Winfi eld Inspired by Actual Events
IT STARTED WITH AN INQUIRY. The group organizing the 100th anniversary celebration for Dallas’ Union Station wanted to get in touch with the artist John Winfield. They sought use of his painting Dallas Streamliners, shown here, as a showpiece for the event. Thus was born the theme of “Portraits of Railroading” on pages 38-45. It also provided an opportunity to introduce John Winfield, one of the nation’s premier railroad artists. The Artist: Born in 1941, John’s love
of trains began at age four, when, if he’d behaved in church, his dad would take him to the Texas & Pacific station in Fort Worth, Texas. There he encountered T&P and Katy steam and Fort Worth & Denver stainless steel E-5s pulling the Texas Zephyr. The family’s subsequent move to southern California brought the Espee and Santa Fe to his attention. In 1962, he began his art career innocuously, accepting a position at a yearbook publisher. After six years there and four years in a one-man print shop,
he was named supervisor of publications at a community college, where he met and married his wife Elaine. In 1976, they moved back to Fort Worth and established a commercial printing business. In 1988, John took up painting as a
hobby, equipped only with art classes in high school and junior college, desire, and a copy of a book purchased at a hardware store titled simply How to Paint. Landscapes dominated his early works. We can thank Elaine for suggesting he paint trains, given that was a passion of his. Since then he has created 284 paintings, 95 percent of them commissioned. He attributes his big break to the Santa Fe Railway’s purchase of an early work — War Horses — for use on promotional literature when the railroad returned to the warbonnet paint scheme. That exposure, combined with his growing art and printing skills, enabled him to produce affordable gicleé prints on canvas and paper. The Art: Three factors account
for Winfield’s success. First, careful research: “Customers are very particular about accuracy. Was that locomotive type, bearing that number, in that light, ever in the setting I’m creating?” He collects books and video footage, and confesses to studying pictures and watching scenes over and over. “I live ’em when I’m painting them.” Second, patience: “I typically devote 50 to 100 hours to a work. Beginning with a drawing, then an increasingly detailed painting, I work until I get everything right and satisfactory for the client.” Third, a desire to, as he puts it, “evoke remembrances,” that intangible but real reaction of satisfaction from the buyer. Winfield adds a fourth factor, his faith and prayer, saying, “I trust the Lord to provide inspiration and guidance in my work.” The Painting: Dallas Streamliners, commissioned in 2012, portrays the motive power and paint schemes of each railroad running streamlined trains out of Dallas Union Station. The
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