THE CROSSING
ACRYLIC
30”x40”
This painting depicts four small boats filled with Irish peasants in rough seas moving away from stormy skies. They are being guided toward the light and calmer seas by Saint Brendan the Navigator, the patron saint of sailors. He was an Irish saint from the 6th century who led a group of followers across the North Atlantic possibly all the way to North America in search of the Garden of Eden in a traditional, skin-covered, wooden Irish sailboat called a currach. On his journey he stopped on an island that turned out to be the back of a giant sea creature of some kind, probably a whale. In the painting, St. Brendan stands on a giant cod (another important staple food that would fail in the 20th century) holding ropes to each of the boats, tethering the emigrants to hope.
In 1976 British explorer Tim Severin built a replica of St Brendan’s boat and successfully recreated his voyage from Ireland to North America.
