The Union Pacific rail line runs a mere fifty feet from the back of my parent’s house in Missouri. Mile-long freight trains carrying anything from corn syrup to nuclear waste travel by every twenty minutes. The sound is deafening, but the scene can be picturesque.

I really struggled with this painting. There are two “F words” in landscape painting with which all painters must grapple: "foreground" and "foliage". It was the foliage in the foreground (doubly troublesome) that gave me the most problems. How much detail to put in? How dark to make the foreground so that the lighter colors in the background read as hazy distance?

In the end, I think I reached a satisfactory conclusion — but I only came to realize it through the responses I've received from various people. I wasn't all that happy with this painting until I came to see it through the eyes of others.