When I lived in Georgia, I became more involved with Art Festivals around the area in the mid-1980s. While driving down a road outside Cartersville, on Sugar Valley Road, I saw a gas pump that was on a farm, apparently used for the owner’s equipment. These paintings were all variations of the same pump.
This painting was the first in a series of gas pumps I painted during that time. A few other pumps were Shell, Gulf,Mobile, Marathon and Sinclair.
Copyright Larry JohnstonCopyright Larry JohnstonCopyright Larry JohnstonCopyright Larry Johnston
In 1986, during one of my Art Festivals, I had exhibited some of my past work in a photograph book, which included some commission work that I had done. Billy Neal, a local resident, owned a gas station in Cartersville, GA. His wife saw a painting of a Texaco gas pump hanging in my booth and purchased it for her husband as a gift.
Since she had seen some of my local paintings that I had done for other people in my book, asked if I would paint a picture of Billy’s Texaco station in Cartersville, GA., I was delighted to be able to add another local painting to my photograph book, which led to other commissioned paintings.
During my years of painting and selling, I had many requests for prints. The subjects ranged from outhouses to Fancy Theatres. As I collected my subjects and painted them, I started painting them in sets of four. One of those sets included Gas Pumps. They included Texaco, Shell, Gulf, American, Sinclair and Marathon. As you can see, my sets of four grew as more requests came in.
One of those pumps I found, was in central Indiana, north of Indianapolis. Many farmers had their own pumps for the farm equipment. This one was behind the farm-house, out by the barn. The old pump up gas pump, with the glass top was still in pretty-good condition, however you can tell they no longer use it, since the rubber filler hose was missing. It was called a “Gravity Pump”. You pumped the gas into the glass top, for the amount you wanted and then when you were ready, you opened the valve and the gravity forced the gas through the hose into the equipment. Several of my paintings included gravity pumps.
The Marathon pump was conveniently located, right by the entrance to the fields. With Winter at hand, there was not much activity.
Copyright Larry Johnston
Gas Pumps are pretty popular! Here are the ones I have painted so far…
During my years of painting and selling, I had many requests for prints. The subjects ranged from outhouses to Fancy Theatres. As I collected my subjects and painted them, I started painting them in sets of four. One of those sets included Gas Pumps. They included Texaco, Shell, Gulf, American, Sinclair and Marathon. As you can see, my sets of four grew as more requests came in.
One of those pumps I found, was in central Indiana, north of Indianapolis. Many farmers had their own pumps for the farm equipment. This one was behind the farm house, out by the barn. The old pump up gas pump, with the glass top was still in pretty good condition, however you can tell they no longer use it, since the rubber filler hose was missing. It was called a “Gravity Pump”. You pumped the gas into the glass top, for the amount you wanted and then when you were ready, you opened the valve and the gravity forced the gas through the hose into the equipment. Several of my paintings included gravity pumps.
The Marathon pump was conveniently located, right by the entrance to the fields. With Winter at hand, there was not much activity.
When you look at the gas stations of today, with their fancy buildings, and huge canopies over the pumps, you forget what it was like, less than 30 years ago. While driving down the back roads of north Georgia, we went through the community of Lula.
In my early years of painting nostalgia, while gathering information on future paintings, I came upon a Shell station, that was located in Lula. It had the old-fashioned look of years gone by, so I stopped and took a few photos of the gas pumps.
I eventually painted a painting of those pumps, which also became part of my gas pump set of 4 different brands. Some of the others were, Gulf, Texaco, Marathon and Sinclair.
Copyright Larry Johnston
Gas Pumps are pretty popular! Here are the ones I have painted so far…
There was a period, when I was taking photos of old gas pumps to use in paintings. The Gas station here was somewhere in Georgia, but the pumps were missing, so I put the pump in my painting and restored the building to match the era.
This was one of the first paintings, where I started adding things, to match the time period. Many of my paintings have cars and trucks added to the landscape, such as many of my 1950 type Diners and Restaurants. This was a 9″ x 12″ acrylic painting on canvas.
I used to also sell photo prints of the paintings, as well as framed sets at many of the shows I attended.
Copyright Larry Johnston
Gas Pumps are pretty popular! Here are the ones I have painted so far…
There was a time when I enjoyed painting pictures of old fallen down barns. While living in Cartersville, Georgia, I was driving down Sugar Valley Road, when I saw a farm-house, with a barn and a gas pump near it, so I took some photographs of it. I eventually painted the picture and found that people wanted more pictures of gas pumps, so I eventually painted other pumps, like Shell, Gulf, Sinclair, American, Marathon and of course several Texaco pumps. We called this one “Brown Barn Texaco” since I later painted one with a red barn in the paining. We called it “Red Barn Texaco”, of course.
During one of the art festivals, a young couple purchased the painting, which was a 9″ x 12″ canvas acrylic painting. They had a pick-up truck that they had restored and wanted me to paint the truck in this painting. Instead of adding to the painting, we agreed that a second painting would be done as a continuation of this painting, to hang next to this one. (Restored Truck painting)
After I had painted the Texaco pump with the brown barn in the background, I called it brown Barn Texaco. This painting was similar, but needed some more color to the painting, so I added the Red barn. It was one of several different brands that I eventually painted. Gas pumps became quite a collection subject, for people that made a habit of buying my work.
My prints were available to buy in a 5″ x 7″ and 11″ x 14″, including a mat around the print. I even made barn-wood frames for a while, then switched to a variety of frame colors: black, Burgundy, forest green and colonial blue. .Now I offer the prints on stretched canvas, to make it look like the original.
After painting a few different gas pump paintings, I started getting requests for different brands. One of those brands was Sinclair, as many people worked for Sinclair during their youth, pumping gas, some being their first job. I sold 5 x 7 prints of my paintings, so there were many gas pumps that were just the right size.
The painting was a typical setting for the era of that style pump. The surroundings I chose, was in north Georgia at a typical general store. After painting four or more different pumps, I started selling a four-print set of gas pumps. Other paintings of gas pumps I have painted are: Shell, Texaco, Mobile, Marathon and Gulf.
