Inspired by the work of the great 19th century American painter, Fitz Hugh Lane, especially his paintings that so directly refer to the end of the age of sail, I thought to try juxtaposing some local symbols of the past, the present and the future within one image.

While Lane’s visual narrative was both dramatized and nostalgic, he nevertheless made an accurate and telling case for the fast approaching demise of the great era of sail and the advent of a game-changing new technology, steam power.

I had Lane fully in mind in creating this amalgam of different eras. Thanks to the Penobscot Bay Pilots I knew when one of the tankers was coming up the bay and that was that.

Here’s to those who preserve the past, those who inform the present and those working to make a sustainable future.