John Storrow

This boat is called the “Zebra” only because of her stripes. I carved and hollowed her out of  layers of pine some time in the late 1990’s. The reason I gave her colored stripes was to make people think she was Art with a capital A. At the time I made her, I didn’t think a mere model of a boat would be something people would want to put in an Art gallery, hence the colored stripes and the blue sails. To me, my “zebra” meant something more than a mere model of a boat, but I could never find the right words to describe what that meant, but I could feel it whatever it was, I definitely could.  “Zebra” is about forty inches long, she has a deep ballast keel, and radio control servos for steering and sail control. She’s incredibly fast when the wind blows,  Link to video- https://youtu.be/sbWbqXiy3Ns especially sailing to windward. I’ve sailed her a great deal Since I made her 25 years ago. She has a small persnickety leak somewhere which keeps coming back despite years of try...

  I spend a lot of time thinking about distinguishing between the act of creating a painting, and the act of finding an audience for a painting. Needless to say I have made a lot of paintings, and it’s much better to share them face to face with actual people besides myself than it is to post on social media, let alone allow the paintings to collect dust in storage. Of course Social media has its uses, but perhaps it becomes a crutch, or an easy out from the much harder job of finding a real brick and mortar gallery. Social media has not gotten me anywhere closer to a real show in a gallery. For me, the act of creating is what gets me out of bed in the morning. The act of applying to galleries is not something that motivates me but it needs to be done. I keep forgetting that I’ve sold 50 paintings as of this writing, but there are so so many more paintings left in storage that need to go on somebodies wall. They need to see the light of day. I’m not sure if the need for an audience...