From a bay’s sea, sky, sand and rocks

“Rock 234: Yellow Flag” (painting), by Tom Gaines (1935-2023), in the show “Tom Gaines: The Last Paintings,’’ at Corey Daniels Gallery, Wells, Maine. Mr. Gaines was based in New Jersey but also painted at his summer home, in Belfast, Maine.

He wrote:

“Since 2005, three major changes have taken place, which have brought me to where I am now… a series of more than 2,000 rock paintings. 

“The first change came when I created, quite by accident, a different surface. I had attempted with mineral spirits to wipe out a color that I had allowed to dry for a few days. Some of the color remained, revealing layers of old and new color. This revelation of layers suggested erosion. I was so taken with the result that I purposely worked this way with subsequent paintings. 

“The next change came while I was working on a series of interiors and decided to eliminate most of the subject matter. The result was a simpler, more geometric and more abstract composition. I worked this way for more than a year. Simplifying and layering. 

“I made a third change while working in my studio in Belfast, Maine. I realized that I needed to prioritize my ideas regarding the relationship between subject matter and form. I found the simpler subject matter/composition from the sky, sea, sand, and rocks of Penobscot Bay.’’

#Corey Daniels Gallery #Tom Gaines

Penobscot Bay from Belfast

Blaisdell Residence, Belfast, from a circa 1920 postcard. It’s a Greek Revival mansion from the city's 19th Century shipbuilding boom. Known as The Williamson House (www.TheWilliamsonHouse.com) survives today as a Museum in The Streets landmark.

Our suppressed holiday season

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

This holiday season is bizarre, sad and frustrating.  But holiday dynamics are always changing anyway with social/demographic/economic  change. The thing I’ve most noticed is how the composition of holiday gatherings has changed since the heyday of the American nuclear family, back in the ‘50s  -- two parents married to each other living together with a bunch of kids.

Families are smaller,  relatives are more dispersed, fewer people get married, there are now many more open gay relationships and a higher percentage of people at holiday feasts are friends, not family members. Or, I suppose you could say, the definition of “family’’ has changed for many people.

All this has made the holidays  more socially interesting, if more unpredictable. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to seeing, in 2021, if the pandemic permanently changes how we celebrate the holidays, beyond our collective efforts to make Amazon’s Jeff Bezos a trillionaire. I’m guessing that there will be a huge pent-up demand for in-person gatherings. But some may decide that they prefer virtual communication after all.

Something else I’ve noted is while the holidays are still romanticized – after all, they’re an escape -- there’s a  bit more realism around. Consider the reminders at Thanksgiving of how the Native Americans said to have joined in the “First Thanksgiving” feast had been traumatized by the English bringing highly infectious diseases to  the “Indians,’’ who had no immunity.  You never read that when I was a kid. And there are many more warnings  about excessive drinking over the Christmas holidays. It used to be that the drunk at a Christmas party with a lampshade on his head tended to be seen as funny and part of the general jollity of the season; now he’s seen as sad.

We’re going into the darkest time of the year, made darker of course by the pandemic. The brevity of daylight depressed me more a few years ago. But an aspect of aging is that time seems to go by faster and faster. Remember the old line “After a certain age, we seem to be having breakfast every 15 minutes”?  So I’m now more aware that the days will get longer in a few weeks, though we won’t notice it much until late January, and that we’re moving ever closer to spring. The old leaves are off the trees, making room for the new ones.

Tom Finneran, the former speaker of the Massachusetts House, among other big jobs, had some good advice in a GoLocal column as we enter the cold season: Read  catalogs that remind you of happier times to come (if we’re lucky and careful) and escape in your mind to late next spring and summer, when vaccines, we hope, start to liberate  most of us.  Mr. Finneran mentions gardening, beekeeping (a surprise from this tough guy!) and travel.

Think of lines from the ‘30s  song “These Foolish Things”:  “An airline ticket to romantic places. Still my heart has wings…’’ or  lines from “Let’s Fly Away,’’ the ‘50s song made famous by Frank Sinatra: “Once I get you up there, where the air is rarefied We'll just glide, starry-eyed….’’

Yes, it’s a good time to day dream.

To read the Finneran column, please hit this link.