Watercolor on paper, 2018, by Warren Deferbrache
This painting is one of my earliest works, yet it remains one of my favorites. At its center is a weathered Studebaker pickup truck, its surface bearing the ghostly traces of at least ten different paint jobs. I grew up in a small town not far from South Bend, Indiana, where Studebaker cars and trucks rolled off the assembly line, so this battered vehicle feels like a relic from my own past. The scene is set at an abandoned gas station along historic Route 66, near the turnoff to the Petrified Forest in Arizona. Faded signs, peeling paint, and cracked pavement hint at the days when this stop buzzed with travelers. Scattered around the station are other aging cars, their rusted frames and soft, sagging tires completing the sense of a forgotten moment in American road-trip history and deepening the nostalgic mood of the piece.
