COLUMBIA STATION
Davis W. Morton / 2002 / oil on canvas / 30 X 32 inches

     Rather than being an ethnic neighborhood, that might be found in another kind of city, Adams Morgan is appropriately an international neighborhood in Washington, DC. French, Ethiopian and Persian restaurants are all there side to side. On an unusually warm October night in 2001 I saw this group of people standing on the steps of Columbia Station, a bar that has been in the neighborhood for many years.
     Normally in the process of painting I discover elements that reveal what the painting I am doing consciously means to me. With “Columbia Station,” I always felt its depth and its mystery, but it is a mystery that still escapes me. Perhaps it has something to do with the word, “Columbia,” the female personification for America. Certainly, like the women in the painting, in October of 2001 there was despair and the need for a return to normalcy, but this is only one direction this painting could take.
     As is my custom in a situation of this sort, I have created a sphinx who has this knowledge that I lack. He is the man standing in the shadows to the right.

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©2002
Comments and Original Art by Davis W. Morton (18-185)