Columbia Station by Davis Morton

COLUMBIA STATION / 2002 / oil on canvas / 30" x 32"  SOLD... Read a painting comment below...

      Rather than being an ethnic neighborhood, that might be found in another kind of city, Adams Morgan is more like an international neighborhood in Washington, DC. French, Ethiopian and Persian restaurants are all there side by side. On an unusually warm October night in 2001 I saw this group of people standing on the steps of Columbia Station, a bar that has been in the neighborhood for many years.
     Normally in the process of painting I discover elements that reveal what the painting I am doing consciously means to me. With “Columbia Station,” I always felt its depth and mystery, but it is a mystery that still escapes me. Perhaps it has something to do with the word, “Columbia,” the female personification for America. Certainly, like the seated woman in the painting, in October of 2001 there was despair and the need for a return to normalcy, but this is only one direction this painting could take.
     As is my custom in a situation of this sort, I have created a sphinx who has this knowledge that I lack. He is the man standing in the shadows to the right.