I’ve always been attracted to things nautical: ships, boats, rope, sail and rigging, running paint and patterned reflections. Beyond function, I delight in the surfaces, textures, rhythms and forms that I find on piers, docks, harbors and marinas. They interrupt light beautifully, illuminating the full spectrum of aesthetic dimensions— line, contrast, shadow, gradation, texture and so on.

Like life, water and everything on it is in constant motion. The rising and falling of waves and tide are a kind of breathing which results in randomness and order—the generators of the aesthetic dimensions, there for light to reveal. Nautical subjects also lend themselves to abstraction, the urge to make images that point to something beyond the subject matter and its label. When something seems more than what it is, or something other that what it is, a “picture” is transformed into an “image,” an experience that sparks the imagination.

These analytical perspectives are attempts to understand something very simple: I don’t know why, but my aesthetic sensibilities soar when I’m around water, ships, boats and rigging.

“I can’t control the wind but I can adjust the sail.”

Ricky Skaggs