Melinda Hannigan has an eye for the maritime trade
By John Levesque June 20, 2013
This article originally appeared in the July 2013 issue of Seattle magazine.
The Puget Sound region is famously celebrated as a recreational sailors paradise. But its the commercial aspect of maritime activity that holds Melinda Hannigans attention like a storm gathering on the horizon. The Seattle-based artist, whose oil paintings are on exhibit at Waterworks Gallery in Friday Harbor this month, takes inspiration from the gritty world of tankers, tugs and bulk carriers, rendering in abstraction a reality rooted in steel, water and rust.
Ive known this environment all my life, says Hannigan, whose husband worked as a licensed harbor pilot on Puget Sound. The colors and markings on these working ships are endlessly varied and often starkly beautiful, especially at the waterline. The rusted scrapes, drips and smears, the characteristic lettering and numbers, give each vessel a distinct personality. These ships travel the world and each port they visit leaves its mark, which inscribes the story of each ship on its skin.
Hannigans view is not the stem-to-stern aspect of the seascape realist. She focuses on close-in scratches and markings on vessel hulls. I keep in mind a favorite saying of my teacher, Charles Emerson: Reality is highly overrated. I thus manipulate color, perspective, composition and texture, and, as a result, my paintings include realistic images that become abstract canvases.
7/208/10. Times vary. Free. Waterworks Gallery, 315 Argyle Ave., Friday Harbor; 360.378.3060; waterworksgallery.com.