DISAPPEARING: The Working Waterfront of Downeast
Paintings by Valerie Aponik and Robin Rier
As Maine evolves over the twentieth first century, the choice of landscape subject is changing. Even as many artists continue to seek out the hidden cove, the secluded stream, the perfect growth of birch trees, others are busy dealing with the monuments of a modern industrial society, such bridges, wharves, jetties, smokehouses, docks, fishing boats, floats, traps, and all the other icons of the working waterfront.
We are not only of the natural world, but also of the human-made world. Of course, some subject matter has gone the way of the wind, and history. Clipper ships at anchor in a still harbor used to be a favorite motif for marine painters in this state, but despite climate change and rising sea levels, there are still painters who are interpreting, celebrating, and memorializing today's Downeast Maine's working waterfront before it changes beyond recognition.
As the natural resources of the planet dwindle, the landscape of Maine, and the depictions of it, become all the more precious. As the great late Maine writer, Elizabeth Coatsworth, offered a prescriptive course of action for preservation, one, which would match the sentiments of most Maine painters, present and past: "If Americans are really to become at home in America, it must be through the devotion of many people to many small, deeply loved places. The field by the sea, the single mountain peak scene from a door, the island of trees, and farm buildings in the western wheat, must be sung and painted and praised until each takes on the gentleness of the thing long loved, becomes an unconscious part of us, and we of it." To this, I would add all that makes up the working waterfront dotted along the Bold Coast.
The two artists, Valerie Aponik and Robin Rier, featured in this book and exhibition have, in one way or another, devoted themselves to such "small, deeply loved places." They have gone beyond typical coastal scenery to capture an essence, a quality of light, land and sea, and of the working waterfront, which belongs to Maine. Even as they heighten our appreciation of a particular view, they also preserve it; and such acts of preservation will be essential to Downeast Maine's future-proof of a beauty and heritage that knows no bounds.
