After Arthur Dove’s Sea Gull Motive (Sea Thunder or The Wave)
Through your art, made on our shared harbor, I see things about our place that are visible yet invisible. And this coming from invisibility to visibility sifts out some of my anxious reaching to be somewhere else. How hard it is to see what is right in front of me. How easily one drowns in the drama of daily strife, those yellow-beaked squawkers always seeming to be stealing my bagel and shitting on my beach chair. The painting cares about how they move, how intent they are on moving, and how they are part of the movement. The motif is the metaphor. The motive is the motion. The invisible made visible. The paint catching what it feels like to ride a current, gifting a glimpse of the glide. The emotion of motion. The wings in the waves and the waves in the wind. All morning, I gaze at the art book and in the afternoon, I leave my tiny house and walk to the shore and position myself where sand meets sea meets sky, stretching my arms wide so the invisible takes shape in my cells. I find the palette’s flash of purple in a scape of steel-blue sea and linen-shaded sand. I become part gull, lines of white and gray and black undulating with the wind bands. First in the painting; then in the sky; then deep within. The invisible made visible. The beautiful moving through me. The immanence of landscape. This traveling in place.
Jesse Curran is a poet, essayist, scholar, and teacher who lives in Northport, NY. Her essays and poems have appeared in dozens of literary journals including About Place, Ruminate, After the Art, Allium, Blueline, and Ruminate. She teaches in the Department of English at SUNY Old Westbury. www.jesseleecurran.com
Artwork credit: Sea Gull Motive (Sea Thunder or The Wave) by Arthur Dove, 1928, oil on wood panel, De Young Museum, accession 1990.19. This work is in the public domain.
