Judy Blue Eyes

Lauren's Knockdown

Peace Maker

Here is Lundy Robinson, in his trademark hat and trousers, driving Peace Maker at full speed. His mainsheet man, like all Bahamian mainsheet men, is built like a prize fighter and has to be. Because the rules say that these boats must remain traditionally Bahamian in character, meaning no winches are to be used! Even though in actual fact not many of the boats are sailed from the far out islands, or even built there, the hail ports indicate a connection. For instance Peace Maker’s hail is “Lovely Bay, Acklins.” This is indicative of a Bahamian cultural tradition. Young sons and daughters, if they are bright and ambitious, often go off to Nassau for education and eventually to lead a modern, middle-class life. But they will always identify with their origin island. This goes down generations. A successful Magistrate from Nassau who desecended from several forebears there will still answer a question, Where You From, with the name of some forgotten village on his great-grandparent’s island. I once asked the same of one of the past Prime Ministers, a man fully identified with the political hullabaloo in Nassau. “Lisbon Creek, Andros” was his instant reply. On Acklins Island, it might as easily have been “Snug Corner” or “Goodwill” or “Delectable Bay”. Bahamian boats hail from places that sound as wholesome and beautiful as the boats themselves are.
This is the quintessential Art Paine theme of charging sloop, intense human effort, and most of all, delightful, masterfully painted shallow water

He Reached For It

Every year “Cap” Rolly Gray’s daughter paints up Tida Wave for Regatta. She’s always white (the boat of course) but the name and other decoration vary. Some years the name is on the transom and some, like here, on the side. There might be a spray-painted tidal wave painted at the cutwater. One year she even mis-named the boat Tidal Wave until a hail of protest got it the “L” outa there.
The purchaser of “He Reached For It” is a retired elementary school art teacher who herself never had any children. But her love for children and her love for art, but more poignantly her love for BEAUTY, are instantly transparent. She has had every operation done upon her eyes that’s possible. Seven times on one eye and five on the other. But at age 80 she is resigned to the fact that she’s going blind. She said to Art that it was her wish to see and store up in her mind as much visual beauty as possible before she cannot see, can only remember.
If Art Paine had heard that whole truthful story BEFORE she gladly bought the work, she wouldn’t have had to actually pay for it. This is an exciting painting. It is a blast of color, and the artist hopes that it isn’t evident that those colors were combined with some consideration of classical “color theory” as much as for photographic accuracy. He is reaching for it on a wall in a beautiful cape-style house with a gorgeous view of Port Clyde, Maine. A view she sees less and less of every day.
It was vital that he leave hold of the mast and extend his efforts just a few more inches, daring the angle of heel and the slick, wet foredeck.. But did he ever actually get it???

August Tuesday at Rolleville

FYI, August Monday, the first Monday in August in the Bahamas, is a national holiday when many Nassau and Freeport residents go home to their origin islands to party. There are numerous small sailing regattas, beauty pageants, dances and sport field days then. For we Northerners and Maine-iacs the weather would be frightfully hot. Bahamians consider this time, when the trade winds still blow enough to keep down the sand flies, the height of wonderful summer. (As opposed to September, when the trades fail to do the job and life in the Bahamas is only barely bearable.)
Forget the subject, which is two racing dinghies, while racing home, pulled up on the beach, their captains catching a snooze. The painting is not about that.
This work is done on a canvas that has been repeatedly gessoed and smooth-sanded to a perfect porous Flake White surface. This in preparation for the repeated thin washes that create the image. This is a painting done almost in the same way as a watercolor, with many places reserved out as highlights. It is a brilliant and translucent work, only revealing itself as an oil through opaque areas that could never have been so contrasty without a little thickness and texture. There’s a limited palette, but just as is true with a good Winslow Homer….well, better yet…. Just as is true with the very best of Winslow Homer watercolors like “After the Hurricane”, a limited palette can still show all the color variation necessary, through subtlety. What makes it work is that each color is completely accurate. Thank god the days of amateurs doing abstraction are behind us. Some of them, just like you suspected, were phonies. It is impossible for the diligent figurative artist to be phony, and it is particularly impossible for the diligent figurative MARINE artist to be phony, since marine art is obviously wrong if even slightly inaccurate. Note the accuracy, in color and in draughtmanship, of Winslow’s “After the Hurricane.” “August Tuesday” is at least comparable.

Bedding the sun

Everything’s different across the Gulf Stream. Bahamian sailing has it’s own rules of engagement and it’s own nautical terms. For instance, the points of sail are not Beating, Reaching and Running, but Beating, Checking and Bedding. A boat going downwind is sailing Onna Bed. Here’s Southern Cross, sailing the long stern chase into the late afternoon sun. She’s bedding down the sun, as the Bahamians would say. This is a very small painting, only 8 by 10, on canvas board. It is probably one of the best oils Art Paine has ever done. Art has worked in what he calls necessary spurious colors throughout the foreground water, and that’s what makes the entire image work. The effect is similar to that of using a grisaille that shows through the finish painting, but in this case such accents as the russet around highlights is added as a thin wash over a nearly completed painting.

Conched Out

Conched out is a rare watercolor by Art Paine. It depicts a colorful pile of flotsom that washed up in storms around the base of a coconut tree. To the artist, it is also representative of the fugitive quality of beauty. The exact scene, the exact tree, and in many ways the entire little tropical town of Steventon, are much changed after a dozen years. On the site of “conched out”, the coconut tree having been removed, is now the very popular native restaurant “Warren’s Conch Shack”. What remains is the incredible view of Exuma Sound, and of course more discarded conch shells than ever, given the restaurant’s island-wide popularity.

Chasing the Waves

The “New Chase” again. Perennial class “B” sloop champion built and sailed by Lauren Knowles of Mangrove Bush, Long Island, Bahamas. The bow boy is Stephan Knowles, who a year after this painting was done won the national youth sailing championship at Regatta Time in Exuma. In so doing he earned a summer’s trip to a summer sailing community, Cotuit, on Cape Cod. There Stephan had to learn all the American ways of racing. Like starting under weigh instead of at anchor. Like all the complex racing rules and tactics.
Cotuit is a place where a lot of wealthy and accomplished, forgive me for saying it but WASP-y folks live. And they take their racing in Cotuit skiffs extremely seriously. Art Paine, who now paints, once augmented his other vocations by building rather gorgeous varnished, sleek, competitive Cotuit skiffs in his shop in Bernard, Maine.
Stephan Knowles, age only sixteen years, entered in the most prestigious summer event of the season in Cotuit, the Cotuit Mosquito Yacht Club overall club championship. In a boat, the “Airforce” built by Art Paine. Against all those intensely competitive dare I say WASP lifetime sailors who know the shallow muddy waters of Cotuit harbor by the back of their suntanned hands.
Stephan Knowles, in the year of the summer of 1999 at the age of sixteen took home the Cotuit Mosquito Yacht Club overall club championship first prize to his home on the island of Mangrove Bush, on forgotten little Long Island, in the sleepy Bahamas. In a year or so, probably Lauren Knowles will give over the tiller of New Chase to Stephan. Then, Marcus Mitchell…..then we’ll see!

In the village of “the Ferry”, on Little Exuma Island, is what is billed as the World’s smallest Church. Art Paine has reason to doubt that, because long ago with a girlfriend he knelt and prayed it would all work out in a tiny roadside chapel in the town of Startup, Washington State. But certainly this is the World’s smallest Anglican church. Year after year the church has baked in the sun, and one year the bouganvillea and Frangipani and other tropical flowers all bloomed at once in profusion around the old rugged cross and the church bell. It was a sight to see. This is a poor reproduction of the painting, but a top Maine art critic once remarked about the clouds.
It did, by the way, all work out. Just not exactly the way they prayed it would.