In The Traces: Railroad Paintings Of Ted Rose

In the Traces presents 60 paintings by Ted Rose, with commentary by the artist. The works are an eloquent and absorbing view of industrial America, especially of railroads as an integral part of the man-made landscape.

Here is the rich narrative of a journey of discovery that began 50 years ago when Rose confronted changes everywhere during the time railroads and the country were in transition. His paintings are a record of his continuing fascination with railroad places, a visual anthology of past and present. These masterful watercolors well describe the atmosphere and life along the tracks during the last half of the 20th century.

Rose finds beauty in the commonplace -- the common places of our experience and in the back alleys of a reality we thought we knew so well. These expressive works are visual documents, informed by the rhythmic idiom of blues music and the poignant song of railroad operations in winter bleakness, blazing sun, or darkest night. The artist's empathy with his subjects, human and mechanical, is given through a brilliantly controlled technique which Rose deftly adjusts to match the nature of a scene, from the soft light of dawn on the prairie to the harsh glare of headlights and signal lights at midnight. Although his works evoke the look of earlier American realist paintings, Rose's knowledge of subject matter and his often unorthodox use of the watercolor medium support his narrative purposes without reference to other artists.