I've Been Working on the Railroad

Robert L. Cormack

Robert Cormack uses nine separate plates and a combination of etching, softground, and aquatint to illustrate a narrative of railroad building and the might of labor. Using a graphically dynamic style that borrows from the early 20th century Machine Age to WPA muralism, Cormack renders figures and trains in equally bold lines and shapes, lending a parallel between the human figures and the machine they help guide through land and city.

Cormack's formal art education took place at the Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, at the height of Abstract Expressionism's fruition in the United States. After taking time to raise a family and work as a unionized postal worker, Cormack retired in 1995 and took up art once again, turning his attention to the printmaking medium. He lives and and works in Santa Rosa, CA.