Winslow Homer and the Poetics of Place

We’re on vacation in Maine: getting battered by waves and sand, taking calmer swims in a lake, eating fried clams or fish, doing lots of ocean staring.

Yesterday we took a break from water to visit the Portland Museum of Art http://www.portlandmuseum.org/ featuring Winslow Homer and the Poetics of Place.

The small (ie. just the right size) show features work owned by the museum, and is part of a Homer celebration which will culminate in the restoration of his nearby studio. There’s a girl sitting in a field with just a spot of red ribbon in her hair, waves crashing on rocks, British women hauling huge laundry baskets in strong arms, an old man paddling a boat in a river, and a soldier in blue uniform aiming a rifle from a tree. I hadn’t known Homer recorded Civil War battles. My husband wondered if he’d asked a model to crouch on some kind of farm equipment: he said he didn’t see Homer with his paint box in a tree across from a sniper.

The commentary on the paintings was elegantly written, and I scribbled a favorite line on the back of a scrap of paper. I hope I got it right. The paintings are “built upon the telling detail that triggers a memory, the flash of the brush, a recollected moment, a narrative that yet leaves the final chapter unknown.”

There are bound to be cracks, holes, passages between what is seen and what’s recorded. Peter remembered this while sketching rocks by the shore: that early realization of an artist that what’s drawn will never be what’s seen. And that’s all right. One makes lines to suggest. The world is inspiration, and art is not a mirror.

I love story, but also that bit of unknown. As I change a fuller narrative to poetry, this is what I need to keep in mind. That a broken narrative can offer readers a way in. That mystery can be as powerful as answers.