One of the engineers at the firm where I work, knowing my interest in painting cityscapes, showed me some photos of a site he was doing some engineering work on. The photos he showed me were of an abandoned conveyor and silos in a train yard in the port of Philadelphia. The photos he had taken of the site were great and I wanted to jump up from my desk and immediately go there to paint.

The next Saturday, a suprisingly warm mid-November day, my husband and I drove down by the docks along the Delaware River and found our way to the Old Greenwich Yard with its giant three story conveyor belt, warehouses, train tracks, and silos. The tower in this painting supports a massive conveyor belt that moved iron ore to and from ships and four spherical silos. It is an amazing site with endless painting possibilities — looking almost post-apocalyptic, like something out of a Mad Max movie. At the end of day I was about half finished. We came back the next afternoon and I completed the painting.

I was glad that I had brought my husband with me because it is a very isolated place with lots of abandoned and crumbling structures. I am not so much afraid of other people but of exploring for a painting spot and having some sort of accident. While I painted, Jim did some drawings in his sketch book. I plan to go back again soon before the weather turns nasty and the scheduled site demolition begins.