Waterlines
These images begin as photographs of the waterline painted along the hulls of boats sitting on their cradles in boatyards, awaiting their return to the sea. As a teenager, I spent the springtime scraping and painting, preparing similar boat hulls for the season ahead. I have returned to walk in boatyards, seeking the passage of years. The boats are covered, now usually shrink-wrapped to keep out the weather, but leaving the waterline and bottoms exposed. The waterline is often encrusted with the residues of the past years. Pausing to study this evidence of where the boat has been, one perceives that the waterline provides an horizon. Above and below that are details of imagined landscapes, perhaps those that could be seen from the boats themselves when they sailed on the water. In developing these images, I share my own imagination and provide the seed for each viewer to form their own remembered landscapes. This project is ultimately an exploration of the minimal elements required to form a landscape in the mind’s eye - the waterline as coastline, the texture as weather, the footprint of barnacles as stars.
