Maine Lobsterman 1955

Rockwell Kent’s 'Maine Lobsterman’—where it was made and when I don’t know, exactly—makes you think about how to make a painting. You’ve got to start somewhere, right? Maybe Kent began by spreading thin layers of paint to set the mood, before building up the forms, solid as rocks, with thicker, more confident strokes. I get a real sense of the artist standing there, feeling the sun, maybe in his face, squinting at the horizon. The brushstrokes capture the quietness of the scene, the stillness of the boat, the lobsterman, alone on the water. I can imagine that, for Kent, it wasn’t just about painting what he saw but about feeling what he saw. The man in the boat is so much smaller than the landscape he navigates. But Kent invites us to consider the relationship between the human and the natural world, the relationship between detail and vastness, and maybe he’s asking, how can we, as artists, capture it all? How can we be so precise, and so free?