Here two fishermen plumb the depths for survival, bound by necessity in a risky and carefully choreographed venture. Hence he rendered countless compositions with influences and subjects that harken back to the Renaissance while often referencing secular current events. His job was to translate photographs back when photographers were learning to frame by co-opting visual language from paintings. He worked as an illustrator for Harper’s magazine, “nose to the litho stone,” and his eye for documentation is obvious here. Homer’s observational skills and use of iconography express a precarious state of human affairs. Its glistening highlight is part of a flickering field of activity across the composition as it verges on breaking the picture plane. And the sharpest point of contrast slices along the hat brim of the smaller fisherman hanging from the boat. Take the sharp sweeping curve of the boat gunwale becoming vague as it moves into atmosphere it cuts in front of the larger fisherman’s less focused contours, making him recede. Meanwhile, edge quality indicates space and transitions. Pure and tertiary colors are placed next to each other to create ocular vibrations, and diaphanous layers of glazing allow the eye to penetrate the surface, integrating the image as a whole. The sky reflects its muted, grayish purples across the glassy water, defining angles and features like countless mirrors changing positions and directions. The shifting sea is dark, warm and green in the foreground, and lighter, cooler and bluer in the far distance. Turner’s, informs his unique understanding of color and its vibrant light from within. Homer’s expertise with watercolors, like J.M.W. Color values and hues are so close in places that, like a Morandi still-life, distinction between man and boat dissolves.Įverything is wet, slippery, moving. An intimate glimpse surrounded by vast emptiness suggests isolation and vulnerability. Foreshortening compresses volume, creating a bold, graphic quality and expanding the sense of scale. The jagged naturalistic mountains of water soften and shimmer through sfumato like a fading dream. The sensuous, lapping applications of paint are loose and free, yet bound by observation and specificity. Like most great traditional paintings, “The Herring Net” is a bundle of contradictions. The sheer impact of the work, his forceful command over both subject and craft, transcends my threshold for suspending disbelief. The more I search this painting’s subtle and complex alchemy, the further I’m set adrift.įor all its outward simplicity, it represents a synthesis of Homer’s experience as an illustrator, painter, adventurer, storyteller and social commentator. I consider Romanticism to be an affliction, one I cannot seem to shake. I’m not sure when I first saw Winslow Homer’s “The Herring Net,” but the piece bobs up and down in my imagination, weathering trends, taste and time. My home chaos didn’t magically organize & clean itself up, but I was much better at DEALING with it because of the online community.Winslow Homer, The Herring Net, 1885, Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 48 3/8 inches Writing my blog helped me look at my life with perspective.step back and think about how I would tell the story with a silver lining. I realized how hard it was to get out of the house with three small boys and have the energy to make and maintain friendships, yet my online friends understood.
Many of those bloggers are among my best friends today (yes, you can make real friends on the internet). That blogroll was filled with more blogs written by people like me.
In fact, in the sidebar of Meghan’s blog was a blogroll (for those of you under the age of 25, a blogroll is something ancient blogger’s used to display other blogs they liked to read). And she realized that other people blogged too and she may or may not be stalking them.
And then the email came and it said it would be the last. We left Holly in the middle of kitchen chaos with three boys under the age of 5 while expecting a very important email. Episode 1: The Day The World Crashed In My KitchenĮarlier, I had moved