When I’d just started art school, back in 2015, I used to travel back and forth to my parents’ house almost every weekend. On Fridays I would take a bus to the train station right after school had ended, trying to make it home before dinnertime. In addition to my school bag I’d carry a large elongated case filled with newly made charcoal drawings, often accompanied by some wild half-finished homework assignment, and a suitcase with dirty laundry. Clumsily carrying all of this stuff I’d grab a cup of coffee to-go before boarding a train to my hometown.
The train journey from my (then) new home in Utrecht to my old home in Groningen takes about two hours. These days I find it hard to imagine that I made that journey every week, but it also makes me feel very nostalgic. In those first months of art school, everything was new and overwhelming: living by myself in a tiny 6m2 room in a shared flat, navigating a new city, meeting so many new people and constantly being forced ‘out of the box’ in all of my art classes. Those moments spend in trains were a welcome break from all of it- staring out of the window, processing everything that was happening or just thinking of nothing for a bit.
On some days, when I wasn’t feeling too tired, I’d take out my sketchbook and draw. There’s something about that small window of non-time, when moving from A to B, that makes it a lovely moment to draw. It is a perfect opportunity to shamelessly stare at fellow passengers, way too caught up in their phones and daydreams to notice.
Drawing also allowed me to escape my own thoughts and feelings. On Sunday nights or Monday mornings, when I’d take the train back to Utrecht with a stomach full of hard feelings, it was a welcome distraction. I remember well how strange and difficult it felt to leave my parents’ cozy house with a warm bed and a full fridge, having to step back into My Own Independent (thought slightly more lonely) life in Utrecht. Still the journey did over time get easier, as well as less frequent, while I slowly transformed into an Actual Adult.
I don’t spend nearly as much time in trains as I did back then. These days it feels a bit like a treat to take a longer journey, to be able to sit down and draw in my sketchbook, undisturbed. My collection of train drawings is still growing. The drawings in this letter have been made over many years- some old and some recent. Sometimes I’m just passing time or practicing my people-drawing skills, but there are also many little stories that seem to emerge from these drawings. Where all of these people going? What are they thinking of, dreaming of?
All of these sketchbook pages are reminders of journeys I took, places I’ve been. Traveling on Swiss trains during my Erasmus in Luzern. Taking the ‘Bergensbanen’ from Bergen to Oslo. Inter-railing across Europe. Going to and from the airport when I was living in Norway. There’s just something about traveling by train, having the landscape rush past you, that feels different from other forms of travel.
On the subject of trains, a few years ago I did the illustrations for a small booklet with poems called ‘In a train’. It’s about traveling by train, but also about transience, life passing by, parting ways. I remember struggling with it, having to figure out how to draw train tracks and train stations, realizing I’d only ever drawn trains from the inside. Still this series of drawings is quite dear to me, and I like how naive and slightly clumsy some of them are.
(the booklet is still for sale here)
I’ll leave you with some more train drawings, not knowing where the journey will lead to next. Thanks for accompanying me on this one!
