When I see a well-restored antique tractor it makes me think of a work of art. The farmers and other folks who tend to this avocation of tractor restoration are like artists in many ways--dedicated, visionary, and talented in an almost unearthly way. It boggles my mind to see a before picture of a rusty old hulk of iron drug out of a windbreak somewhere, then restored to a shining beauty of a machine that looks like it just rolled out of the factory.
For example, check out this one, a sweet John Deere A, which I spotted on the Larry Zimbelmann farm, near Milford, Nebraska last month.
Paintings of antique tractors, though, well, I wasn't so sure.... until Linda Welsch, a Nebraska artist, e-mailed me a photo of a piece she's been working on for a friend. That's it above, an Allis-Chalmers, 1940s vintage.
Linda worked from photos provided by the owner, a Nebraska AGCO dealer. "I drew it freehand from the photo in oil paint, let it dry and each night brought it in the house for Rog [that would be Roger, her famous husband] to look at and tell me if all the parts were in the right place, since I didn't know a carburetor from a gas tank. I was only drawing the shapes I saw."
I think you got the shapes right, Linda. Indeed. Thanks for sharing.
Oh, and what does Ol' Rog think? "Tractors aren't so much art, having been manufactured after all, but they ARE artifacts. Linda's painting has turned this one into art."
Some of Linda's earlier works can be seen here: Linda Welsch's art page.
Also, I'm enjoying one of her recent pieces: Loup River.
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Within minutes of publishing this piece, Roger Welsch sent me an e-mail, with further comment on the nature of antique tractor painting. Thanks Rog....
"It occurs to me that Linda is here carrying on however an old folk art tradition. Through America's early history it was very common for a proud farmer to have an itinerant painter...and there were lots of them on the countryside...paint a prize bull or horse. Or in a pinch, his wife or child. In fact, through the winter, these itinerant painters painted torsos in their studios to take with them when travel became good and then all they had to do was paint a baby's or wife's face on the completed torso, saving a lot of time. But also producing some amusing juxtapositions...an ancient crone's face, for example, on a lusciously youthful body.
I don't know that there is a new tradition of tractor owners/restorers/inheritors having artists paint machinery portraits but I wouldn't be surprised. Photography has probably cut into this pretty heavily.
I know that the former national poet Laureate Ted Kooser has a portrait of his tractor (by himself or his wife I think) as a living room center piece at his home in Garland, Nebraska. I don't recall what kind of tractor it is. Other than beloved....
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