Island
Paintings by Tom Curry
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
When artist Tom Curry first moved to Maine, his house overlooked a small, uninhabited island in Eggemoggin Reach. One day, while rowing across to the island, his boyhood fear of water came crashing in on him. So he decided to explore his fear head-on, and began painting the island “as a way to delve into my own darkness and seek a way back to the surface.” That series of paintings, capturing the island in all lights, weathers, and moods, forms the basis of this book. But the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. These paintings represent an ongoing narrative: “island as escape and entrapment, island as longing and memory, island as sanctuary, island as self in a sea of turmoil.” The paintings are accompanied by essays by Terry Tempest Williams, exploring Curry’s spirit of place, and Carl Little, establishing Curry’s art within the field of landscape painting.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Maine's Chatto Island and the sky and water that surround it are the subject of Curry's artistic obsession, and have been since 1996, resulting in more than 40 paintings. What about this landscape has so inspired the artist? When such a question combining spirituality and nature arises, Tempest Williams (Leap) is the most obvious commentator. She provides a brief but deft introduction to pave the way for reproductions of Curry's paintings. Her writing is both graceful and profound, e.g., describing the snow in one of the winter landscapes: "Each flake is painted as a world falling." An essay by art critic Little provides context, situating Curry among American landscape painters, offering a description of Curry's studio, and running through his accomplishments. But it is Curry's essay that provides the real revelation his homage to the island is grounded in a fear of the ocean. When he was very young, his mother inadvertently pinned him under water after a powerful wave knocked them over: "The panic of that struggle seeped into my dreams." That Curry has since lived on and painted islands (including Hawaii) is testament to the significance of the subconscious in creative expression. Curry's paintings some more photo-realistic, some more impressionistic speak as much.
