Northwest Marine Art Exhibition, 1980 By Capt. Harold D. Huycke
There was something there for everybody-beach and tidal basin scenes, harbor views, coastal and deep-sea panoramas which offered the viewer any avenue of escape or means of stepping through the painter's eye one could imagine, at the Sixth Annual Northwest Maine Exhibition of marine art, offered by the Kirsten Gallery of Seattle, Washington from July 13 through August 19, 1980. A total of 85 works of art were presented, done by approximately 55 artists-as comprehensive a collection of watercolor, oil and acrylic as has been gathered under one roof in Seattle to date. To this beached seafaring reviewer, nothing on view compared to the impact of Carl Evers' "Full Load of Crude"-a deeploaded Japanese tanker, bucking a rough sea in what must have been a Force 8 wind, belly-deep with oil, smothered with enveloping spray and seas thrown up by the impact of her bows and the relentless thrust of her propeller. Evers' mastery of detail in portraying the modern tanker, an unlikely subject for a "romantic" painting, was a challenge to this squinty-eyed critic who searched the scene for some piece of gear out of line. There was none. On the same wall was the night-time scene of the lightship Relief, depicted at a moment when she hung at the apex of a downward plunge in a midnight sea, with the moon lighting up patches of black sea. This sailing-ship oriented reviewer must without reserve give William Ryan's oil the highest mark of the whole show for reality, impact and accuracy of detail. (Having passed this vessel in pea-soup fog one dark night, while the lightship's crew augmented their raucous foghorn with a cacophony of warning sounds from banging pot lids, skillets and other kitchen ware-our direction finder and gyro compass were inoperable and the only things working were the foghorn and the magnetic compass-one has to admit to a certain admiration for the lightship seamen who risk being run down by wandering freighters or tankers .) The portraits of ships in this display are scattered in a wide spectrum, from real accuracy to the "impressionist" style. For exam-
pie, there is James Williamson's ''Outbound on a Long Voyage,'' a watercolor showing a full-rigged ship with a cluttered deck, nondiscernible cargo, and some unidentified spars placed on the mizzen mast. Or Robert Skemp's oil, "Fair Winds and a Flowing Sea." This shows, in the same popular, but highly unlikely style reminiscent of the late and popular Jack Spurling, a clipper with stunsails set, and everything else to the skysails for that matter, boiling along in a force 6 wind with a rough following sea. A highly unlikely case of practical seamanship. And to belabor the point with another example, there was Jerry Newport's acrylic "Journey's End," a wood two-masted schooner, with a visible crew of two men, much too small in proportion to the size of the ship and spars, and a useless and unidentifiable fore-yard. The argument may be offered in defense of this type of "impressionist" portrayal, "If you want accuracy, use a camera!" Agreed. But this is a review with the emphasis on technical realism and accuracy. Tom Wells' "OlivebankOn Her Last Voyage Home" leaves no question about the accuracy, coloring, rig and portrayal of this illfated Finnish four-masted bark, plodding along with Australian grain, in the summer of 1939. Her career, unbeknownst to anyone, was within weeks or months of its violent end. Wells knew the ship and her era. Likewise Well's oil "Passat andPamir off Scilly Isles" provides a scene which has all the reality of history within the past three decades. Again, there is no quarrel with the accuracy of the ships themselves. The artist's proportions of receding seas, and distant horizons, however, are not equal to the distant ship dimensions. This is not to say that Mr. Wells cannot paint seas-he can. The ultimate test of a marine artist, in this reviewer's opinion, is his ability to depict the sea in all its moods. that is the supreme accomplishment. But where a distant horizon has to match the size of the distant ship, it's a tricky business to paint it in the same proportion . Of all the sailing ship paintings on display at this preview, however, Thomas Wells' two oils were amongst the best. "Lightship Relief," oil by William Ryan.