Drawings almost every day by Romney David Smith and Tarragon Smith. Occasionally paintings or etchings or silkscreens. Or whatever else catches our fancy.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
The Sea
Nautical paintings have a long history, but paintings of the sea are less common. It was things on the waves, not the sea itself, that animated most painters.
And for the minority of artists that did concern themselves with the sea itself, it was invariably the sublimity of the ocean, its danger and vastness, that provided their themes. Caspar David Friedrich's Monk by the Sea is a good (spectacular, really) example.
Tarragon's recent seascapes have a composition derived from Friedrich. But the theme here is different. The creamy breakers curl and roll, skimming the sand like wet silk over flesh.
They are not sublime. They are erotic, as lush and inviting as Hockney's swimming pools.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That over these sea pastures, wide rolling watery prairies, and Potters' Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like some slumberers in their beds; the ever rolling waves but made so by the restlessness.
ReplyDelete― Herman