There once was an WWII Liberty Ship, decommissioned, scuttled on a distant sand bar, used for target practice and left to winter storms until it collapsed beneath the waves of Cape Cod Bay.
That wreck on the horizon mesmerized me as a child.
I held a belief in the optical illusion that was a just a simple walk across the expansive flats of Eastham.
Target Ship acrylic paint on panel 13” x 48” 2021
Albert Pinkham Ryder
The last bit of it was swept away in the 90’s when I was in graduate school.
There in NY City I labored under the burdens of Post Modernist Deconstruction, the assertion that art was reductive, intellectual and flooded by irony.
My faith in the potential transcendence, so central to making art, capsized. Deep calling unto deep was a fiction.
I’m not sure when I first caught sight of Albert Pinkham Ryder and his relentlessly heartfelt paintings. The strange artist, who’s wonder, focus and obsession made art that reached me across a century cutting through the contemporary cynicism of that moment.
Now in my late 50’s I’ve continued as a painter because of Ryder and a forgotten ship.
These days so much slips beneath the horizon line to be forgotten. But the young still have visions and old dream dreams - with memories of wrecked liberty ships still carrying relief like artifacts of ancient artists.
Wreck ,Cloud, Toy Boat oil on canvas 24” x 36” 1995