Memoriam
Tim Svenonius
In Memoriam, 2017, acrylic on panel, 20 x 24 in.
On the conception and making of Memoriam, 2016
At times I see a picture that stays with me insistently, compelling me to make something of it. For this I have a catch-phrase: I am drawn by the image.
In this instance it was a found photograph of a ship’s crew. Eight men stand facing the camera shoulder to shoulder, sharply defined against a huge canvas sail. The group is replete with contrasts, the identity of each man straining against the ostensible unity of the line. I set to work on adapting it to a painting, knowing nothing about these men or the photo.
In drawing and painting, I have a longstanding interest in the expressive range of the human figure, and what is conveyed through a silhouetted form. When a face is obscured, the body can act as a kind of semaphore, communicating subtleties of emotion and identity.
Often when I paint figures, I choose to depict them as though far away, the specifics obliterated by distance so that only the silhouette is left.
In the case of Memoriam, however, I was interested in key details, and in closing that distance. In the photograph, a rugged tailoring and non-uniformity of the clothes—overalls on some; jackets buttoned or left open, and so on—hint at ranks, roles, and the diverse origins of these men.
The painting was nearly complete when I began investigating the story behind the photograph that inspired it. I learned that these eight were part of the crew of the Wyoming, a six-masted coal schooner that sank during a storm in 1924 off Cape Cod, with all hands lost. The photo dates circa 1923 and is the only known picture of the crew. The fate of the Wyoming also marked the end of an era of shipbuilding: the six-masted, 450-foot schooner had been the largest wooden ship ever built, and the last of its kind in operation.
From the blog of the Maine Maritime Museum, in an entry dated January 2011, on the 102nd anniversary of the Wyoming’s launch:
‘Each year at 12:45 on December 15th, we celebrate the anniversary of the launching of the six-mast schooner Wyoming, the largest and last of the six-masters. …More than a dozen [museum] staff stood on the spot where she was built, in a steady cold rain, and hoisted glasses of various beverages (slowly being diluted by the rain) while reciting the names of the 13 men who went down with the schooner in 1924.’
The method I used is a kind of pochoir, made using a number of overlapping stencils. For every edge of every figure or garment, I cut a shape from paper, used as a sort of shield to lend sharpness to that edge. Something between twenty five and thirty stencils were used.