Ships
Long long ago people would split a tree trunk in half and hollow it out. A vessel, within which, one could cross a body of water. Crossing a void of sorts. Far across, and previously unattainable, lay unexplored and mysterious lands.
I love to collect old books
Definition: ship (n.)
Old English scip "ship, boat," from Proto-Germanic *skipa-
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Others suggest **perhaps originally "tree cut out or hollowed out,"** and derive it from PIE root *skei- "to cut, split" see schizo-).
- definition of ship from etymology.com
The original root of the word boat is nau. Like the word ship, nau has its etymological origins in the splitting of a tree trunk. Nautical, astronauts, nausea.
Once we started to hold thoughts in our heart, the journey across open water, and later all open space, began to hold a mythical place. We set out into the unknown. Mammals full of bravery, determination, and the courage to face the unknown. The mad pull to witness things previously unseen.
Within the human heart is a burning desire to reach outward. To cross over the previously uncrossable. Early on our species saw the limits of existence and a dawning realization that we would one day die. Our loved ones would go somewhere we could not follow. Strange burial rituals exist as far back as archaeological evidence can reach. Stories were crafted. Rituals enacted. We were sending our kin off on a journey.
The boatman’s call
In Ancient Greek mythology, the boatman Charon would ferry the dead across the river Acheron.
Innate in our species is exploration. The ship has always held an mystic place in our hearts. There is a sense that those at sea, with unknown shores ahead, float upon an interstitial. Only a hollowed out tree trunk between them and oblivion. Echoes of the fragility in our own passage through life. This dark void of unknown underneath and bright openness above us. We travel wrapped in layers of the wondrous and mundane. A thin vail of here and now, the vast questing of our hearts, and minds enraptured with the tools of storytelling and art.
studio bibelot
This ship-battle-painting-replica on a plaque is over 40yrs old. It belonged to someone in the family and has now followed me from studio to studio with other treasured gimcrack.
I have always been drawn to ships. Especially those from far away times, on dark and foreign seas. I have always been drawn to the space between our mediums and our stories. The vast dark below the ship, the ethereal ceiling above, the infinite whirl of water against wood. The words on the page and the electrons firing in the vast spaces of the mind.
“Between the Ocean and the Shore. Between the Boat and the Wake. A tear in the paper, the canvas, and the written word.”
When I think of painting or drawing, I am fascinated by the space between the medium and the image. The interstitial between representation and material. Like words to stories, like the spin of quanta in the flow of water. There is great purpose, great structure and a beautiful organic randomness. Peering into those watery depths, something slippery and ghostly peers back. Something there, yet not there. It catches your breath like a brisk wind on the foredeck of the explorer’s ship.
The wind in your face, the spray of strange seas, you stare into something mysterious, something just beyond vision, something that speaks to you from the horizon of named things and the wispy strings that weave them together …