Lifeboat 1998

Here we see a painting of a man in a lifeboat, possibly by Bo Bartlett, who paints with a very realist brush. What’s amazing here is the huge diagonal of the boat itself, taking up almost the whole picture plane. You can feel how steep the waves are just by looking at the angle of the boat and the rower. The artist has built the waves and the shape of the boat with thin layers of muted greens and browns, with hints of ultramarine in the depths. The textures are smooth, almost like glass. I wonder, did the artist labor over these glassy surfaces? The drama of the painting is mesmerizing, and I bet he was thinking about Winslow Homer’s paintings of the sea when he made it. In the end, artists are always challenging each other, even across time. We see each other's work, and we want to make our own mark, our own gesture.