Joint Reception for The Art of Trains and Transit: The Art of Revelation in the Paintings of Susanna Coffey

The Art of Trains, Featuring the Collection of David and Susan Goode

Mechanized trains powered by steam engines first belched their plumes of smoke across bucolic landscapes in the 1820s. From the beginning, the power and fiery aspect of trains pointed back to mythic lore (the fiery breath of dragons) and forward to expanded commerce as the tool for territorial domination during the Industrial Revolution. This is exemplified by their prodigious efficiency in moving goods and people, and the incorporation in their form of magnificent aesthetics of design. Like all of humankind's tools, the train has become an extension of ourselves. It quickens with the breath of its furnace, it hums to life with the blood of electrical current, it roars up and through steep mountain grades to show us its heart. The train has loomed large in the experience and imagination of people the world over.

This exhibition marries images of trains from the work of self-taught and trained artists. Works from the collection of David Goode—retired chairman, president and CEO of the Norfolk Southern Corporation—and his wife Susan Goode, join works from the Gordon collection at ODU and those loaned from other self-taught collections to show the vast imagery of the train in human experience, from Henry Speller and Grandma Moses to Thomas Hart Benton and Man Ray.

Transit: The Art of Revelation in the Paintings of Susanna Coffey

The 23 paintings and one book of woodcuts in this exhibition are part of a body of work that Susanna Coffey began in 1979 while in graduate school at Yale University. The works not only represent her self-portraits that have been lauded by critics and earned her esteem for more than 30 years, they also concern ruminations upon mythic themes, personalities and imagery that reflect the evocative power of ritual caught at a moment of stasis, a gesture in mid-career, and an explosion of color that grounds and consumes the imagery. Coffey's technique is alchemical. It transforms the figure(s) from the particular to something universal that moves our gaze from the exterior surface of the painting to an interior investigation of self.