Everyone’s Coast, Everywhere

There’s a universality about the shore, something that’s familiar to most of us. In less complicated times, we all made our homes close to water, rivers lakes and oceans were our highways. Technology has freed us from needing to be close to water. The water from my faucet comes from the shore of Lake Huron, about 70 miles from here.

When I first saw the thumbnail for this image by John Frederick Kensett, a painter of the Hudson River School who was born nearly 200 years ago, my mind told me it was from the rocky edge  of Lake Superior and not the Connecticut seashore.

Obviously, I thought wrong. The point is, though, that I took possession of the image before I knew where it was from. It connected with my recollections, with places that I love. Learning where the image was made doesn’t sever my connection to it. The memories are of MY coast. Kensett’s painting only reconnects me with something that’s already mine

The Old Pine, Darien, Connecticut (John Frederick Kensett, 1872)