Spin Drift Essay, Research Paper

Spindrift

A Critical Review

I visited the Currier Gallery of Art and I truly enjoyed myself. I had never been to an Art Gallery and only had the impression that I had received through the movies. It was as I pictured it to be, and I would go their or another gallery again. The Currier Gallery had some outstanding pieces of art, they had everything thing from giant wall paintings to small wall paintings and giant sculptures to small sculptures. They even had a room dedicated to technology; they had the old models of vacuums, a boat motor, chairs, a jukebox, and much more.

But out of all the big pictures, the bright colors, the big sculptures, and the big name artists such as Picasso and Monet, the one piece by Andrew Wyeth caught my eye. It was a smaller piece with little color that held so much meaning. Andrew Wyeth is an American, who was born in 1917. This piece is Tempera on Masonite. This piece was painted in 1950 and was named Spindrift.

Spindrift had an old wooden rowboat that had been used and worn-in sitting on the beach with the waves flowing to about mid boat. The ocean was a grayish color flowing onto the dark sand. There was a bucket of silverfish sitting in the floor of the boat below the seat with a hole in it. An over used ore lye in the boat, while a small black colored bird flew just above the ground past the boat. In the side of the boat you could see the reflection of the waves. Even the frame had an old sense like the picture; it looked like it was made from driftwood or possibly old wood from a boat.

When looking at the picture I had my thoughts about what did it mean and stand for. It reminded me of when I was younger and would go to the beach and Mr. Stuvola, an older man, would come home from fishing. But instead of silverfish they would be flounder and everything had more color.

I think that the old boat being on the dark sandy shore and the gray water hitting the boat symbolizes Andrew Wyeth?s life. He feels old; his life has little excitement in it with no color. I think that the bucket of silverfish represents the wealth that Wyeth has. The old worn-in ore lying in the boat represents how he feels to an important person in his life. He is an ore that gets used to paddle someone through life, I believe someone he loves but does not love back. The hole in the seat is his heart; it has a hole in it. I believe that the boat has nobody in it because that?s how Wyeth feels about his life. He feels empty inside and realizes that he is by looking at his life. The black bird flying by represents other love possibilities that pass his boat but they always continue to fly right bye. I think that they continue to fly by he is boat because he tells him self that the women he loves will love him back, so in turn he turns down other possibilities. The reflection of the waves on the boat I feel shows that Wyeth is trying to live his life in his past, possible through something he accomplished when he was younger. And the lack of bright colors in the painting shows lack of excitement in his life. His life has turned into a routine and he hates that.

I loved going to the art gallery and sitting there looking at the pictures and wondering about what the artist was thinking when they painted their pictures. I think it was both worth the money and the time. I would do it again, and I recommend it to everyone. I rate the Currier Gallery of Art as great, but I have no basis for comparison to other galleries. But it was well worth it.