Campbell toured North America in 1953, including a reading stop at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where Colville met the poet. A March 1954 sheet of sketches with preparatory images for this painting includes Colville’s notation of these lines.   Horse and Train has many possible readings. Perhaps it is a metaphor for human life, with the horse representing the individual, the tracks time, and the train death. Perhaps it is a lament about the world’s mechanization and its doleful effects on nature. As curator David Burnett observes, differing readings do not alter the painting’s impact: “One way of thinking of a dark horse does not preclude others…. And all readings (viewings) are poetically sharpened by the natural shock and surprise of the image.”   This Spotlight is excerpted from Alex Colville: Life & Work by Ray Cronin.