GROUPING OF ORIGINAL ART SKETCHBOOKS DOCUMENTING CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS IN MARYLAND AND PENNSYLVANIA

Karsten, Robert

Published by Maryland and Pennsylvania, 1968

About this Item

Three sketchbooks created by a budding artist who later found success as a commercial illustrator of horse races, trucks, and railroad trains. These 8" x 11" standard-size spiral notebooks contain a total of approximately 425 pages, almost all filled with detailed pencil sketches of construction sites. Photographs and clippings from magazines and newspapers are both laid in and attached to about ten pages. Among the many projects documented in the sketchbooks are work at Gifforf Pinchot State Park, the expressway that would become Interstate 83, filtering basins for the P. H. Gatfelter Co., the Quarryville Sr. High School, U.S. 30 and 230, Borg-Warner Corporation headquarters, etc. The vehicles and equipment in Karsten's drawings are usually annotated with company, manufacturer, numbering, and/or license information. The sketches and photographs are all in nice shape. The clippings have tape stains, Karsten was a talented artist from York, Pennsylvania whose works have appeared on national magazine covers, juried shows, and in public and private collections. At 22, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore with a major in painting with a minor in sculpture and intaglio printmaking. He graduated cum laude, then then earned a master's degree at the Huffberger School of Painting, again majoring in painting and minoring in printmaking. He became an Associate Professor of Art at Louisiana Tech University and taught there from 1968 to 1984 when he relocated to Red Lion, Pennsylvania where he worked as a fine artist and illustrator. His life-long fascination with trucks, trains, and horse racing is evident in much of his work. Karsten released a popular series of truck lithographs based upon his original oil paintings, and he was even more successful with his studies of railroad trains. His works were used as the cover illustrations for two books about the Norfolk & Western Railway and one about the Seaboard Air Line Railroad. Additionally, Karsten was commissioned by a Montgomery, Alabama hobby shop to paint a number famous trains that were turned into an even more successful lithograph series which are now highly sought after by model railroaders, "rail fans," and other train aficionados. Karsten never married, and in later years, he was devoted to caring for his elderly mother. He became despondent after his mother's death in 1996 and shortly thereafter committed suicide upon being diagnosed with macular degeneration. Seller Inventory # 008564

Bibliographic Details

Title: GROUPING OF ORIGINAL ART SKETCHBOOKS ...

Publisher: Maryland and Pennsylvania

Publication Date: 1968

Binding: Spiral bound wraps

Condition: Very good