Oil on 26ft sail cloth
After painting the shipwreck sailboat image on it’s tiny piece of tattered sail, I decided to search for an old sail on which to paint my dream.
I decided to walk down to the Fair Haven Yacht Works at the end of my street on DeNormandie Avenue, to ask Jimmy, the owner, if he could find me a sail... and sure enough, a few days later I was lucky to receive an old tattered sail rescued from its sailboat left at the bottom of the river! (He promised to find the sailboat’s name for me....for what is a sail without a name!)
On this sail I have written a story in pictures, poems, lyrics and haikus. This is a story that I imagined in dreams that takes me back to a time of the native Americans that once lived on this peninsula specifically in my neighborhood along the river by my studio.
Centered on the sail, you see the Native American woman strong and lithe standing within the trunk of the sycamore tree with her bow and arrow. She is wearing a headdress, unusual for the time...for me, I dressed her this way to symbolize the feminine shining light within her as she lives her life... I juxtapose this symbol with the present day woman surfing a wave. Below she surfs a massive powerful wave with strength and determination. And just below the surfer, a girl captains’ her sailboat symbolizing women of today empowered with freedom to charter their own course. On her sailboat you see her mast soaring upwards becoming one with the sycamore tree. As the female Osprey flies above them, protecting as she does her young, showing strength in her wings of flight. There is both beauty, love and tragedy on this sail. You will find hidden in the branches and leaves of the sycamore tree, Longfellow’s Minnehaha before her death as Hiawatha tries to save her... all symbols of a woman’s strength, tenacity and vulnerability all under the sycamore tree. The ocean below crashes in its ebb and flow of life, never ending as the Seabright skyline shines behind it revealing only its outline of roof tops and wires of strength as the sun sets behind it. The light from the west symbolizing a new day awaits. Lyrics and poems are written along the telephone wires communicating to the world stories to be heard or held as a secret to just one, quietly transmitting to one’s ear at the other end of the line.
This sailcloth sails the shifting winds of change in life’s ever changing world.
Luba
After I wrote this 10/11 at 1130am... I later found out from Jimmy the owner of Fair Haven Yacht Works the Name of the sailboat that this sail came from (1970) its name he revealed at the Gallery last night! WIND CHASER!!!