Last week I was having a conversation about places and times and the world became a little smaller. Every once in a while this seems to happen, just out of the blue at the least expected moments.
I had grown up in Ontario as you will know from earlier posts and our family was lucky enough to share a small cottage with relatives at Wasaga Beach for a few weeks in the summer.
Wasaga Beach remains a destination for many people in southern Ontario, as it was then. It is a magical place. There is so much sand everywhere and the shallow waters of the bay combined with onshore breezes make a watery playground to good to be true.
Anyways, my host builds scale ship models and I recognized one as a laker. A laker is a long thin bulk carrier ship. They travel the waters of the Great Lakes moving all forms of cargo and have the long narrow hull to allow passage through the canal system. When I commented on the model he said he had spent time aboard lakers on the waters of the great lakes. Our conversation shifted through the here and now to a time when I was a young boy. It turns out he could have been one of the crew on the ships I watched.In my mind, I found myself, once again, standing on the shore of Wasaga Beach, looking out to the ships moving across the horizon. I began to wonder about my connection to the horizon which was the edge of the world.
In the constructed world of the artist I am aware that in one point perspective, the vanishing point for objects would lie on the horizon but more than that the horizon also holds our expectations, our fears and desires. We can move towards the horizon but never arrive. As a place the horizon is always just out of reach.
