The Station Agent

One of the first scenes of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In The West" has a close-up shot of an incidental character teetering between fulfilling his duties as the station agent and fearing for his continued existence. The movie (like all of Leone's films) features many wonderful, lingering shots of faces, but the depth of this one short scene sets up the tone for the rest of the movie.

The station agent knows his place in the world of the movie, and he quickly transforms from an attempt at authority to complete subservience in the face of potential violence. The actor is fantastic in the few seconds he gets onscreen, conveying a pleading desperation...but his part is so small that he doesn't even get billed in the credits. In fact, there's a discussion on imdb just trying to discover his name (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064116/board/nest/170242011?d=171519400&p=1). I was especially taken with the lines and shapes in the actor's face - deep wrinkles are fantastic.

I actually did the initial sketch for this much darker and more definite than I usually do for a watercolor painting, mostly so that it would show up for a picture here. I started with a very direct translation of the still below, but you can see in the sketch above that I have already started to add twitchy lines. I had a drawing teacher once who talked about the way lines moved, even on a stationary object. I haven't decided where this painting will go, but my normal process is to mold the lines to the paint and allow the feeling of the paint to overtake the stodginess of the lines.

Henri Matisse made sculptures and paintings showing the process of artistic abstraction. I don't claim to consider myself a fauvist, but I've always loved being able to see the way design choices take something "real" and claim it as their own.