The Sailboat and Constancy versus the Ephemerality of Life

I was immediately drawn to this minimalistic nautical sailboat piece by Marissa Henning of Island Time Oasis Original Coastal Artwork, even though maritime themed art is not typically my taste.  But when an artist pours their emotion into a piece, that energy reverberates from the depth of their soul outwards and captivate the eyes whose gaze the artifact was destined for.

This painting carries profound personal memories for Marissa as a tribute to her father. As she vulnerably disclosed, “My dad loved sailboats.  He was never a sailor, but he was a fan. He especially enjoyed seeing them all grouped together in marinas. Today marks 4 years since he's been gone. This time of year is always challenging for my family. I truly believe we hold onto trauma and the body/mind remember it cyclically, even when we're not aware.”

As a person who highly honors her father myself, I deeply resonate with Marissa’s emotive intentions behind the painting. But also, as a novice art collector and a fan of the renowned Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, I could sense a subconscious connection between Marissa’s sentimental sailboat and Hokusai’s immortal “36 Views of Mount Fuji,” a series of landscape portraits that depict the iconic Mount Fuji through the ephemeral lens of Nature and human life.

I noticed that every other component on Marissa’s painting is blended with blurry brushstrokes (the sky, the sea, the birds…), EXCEPT for the thin, definitive lines that form the silhouette of the sailboat - perhaps a subconscious projection of how she remembers her father: a valiant, sturdy figure in a world of volatile uncertainty.

And that duality of CONSTANCY versus EPHEMERALITY was the central theme of Hokusai’s venerable homage of Mount Fuji in his series which encapsulate the volatility of life and Nature. Whether through the ominous glare of the Great Wave of Nakagawa, or the precarious wind gust at Ejiri, or under the serene shades of cherry trees at Shinagawa…Mount Fuji is ETERNALLY PRESENT, unchanging, and silhouetted by definitive thin lines that declare her spiritual faithfulness through the transient ebbs and flows of life.

And don’t we all subconsciously need a symbol of unyielding permanence through this volatile thing called “life?”