Bob Dylan|Train Tracks (The Drawn Blank Series)

'Train Tracks' is the image Dylan keeps coming back to in print. First released in 2008, it has been reissued in new colours, sizes and techniques ever since, most recently in 2025.

The image

Dylan first painted it in 2007, among the watercolour and gouache reworkings of his early-1990s tour drawings that became 'The Drawn Blank Series'. A railway line runs away from the viewer through an open, unnamed landscape. Trains recur in his songwriting, from 'Slow Train Coming' (1979) to 'Duquesne Whistle' (2012), and the receding line is often read as a picture of life on the road, one show after the next.

How the editions developed

The 2008 prints set the pattern: one image in four colours, issued together. Fresh colour sets followed in 2010 and 2012. In 2018, ten years after the first release, the image returned in four new colours with a bolder approach.

The 2019 edition changed the method. It was Dylan's first 'Train Tracks' silkscreen and the first version of the image in landscape format. A specialist team in California spent four months building it up from around 60 screens, three of them gel layers that imitate the texture of brushstrokes.

The July 2020 release was the first set devoted to the image alone since 2012. The 2025 colourways mark the 50th anniversary of 'Blood on the Tracks', the 1975 album whose title the image is often linked to.

The railway also runs into 'The Beaten Path', Dylan's paintings of the American roadside. 'Train At Sunset' in 'The Beaten Path 2023' sets a train against the setting sun, and 'Night Train' in 'The Beaten Path 2026' puts the viewer on the tracks as a train approaches.