Artist Statement

A boat belongs to water.

In Boats on the Plain, I remove vessels from their familiar surroundings and place them alone on an open, dry landscape beneath a changing gray sky. Without harbors, docks, waves, buildings, or people, the boats become something different. They are no longer simply working vessels, fishing boats, pleasure craft, lifeboats, ferries, or remnants of maritime history. They become portraits.
I have always been drawn to objects that carry evidence of the lives around them. Wood wears away. Paint peels. Steel rusts. Ropes fray. Hulls are repaired and repaired again. A working boat can contain decades of decisions, accidents, weather, labor, pride, and survival. Even the most beautifully maintained vessel carries the marks of human hands.

The boats in this exhibition range from modest wooden craft to commercial fishing vessels and larger ships. Some are elegant. Some are battered. Some seem almost archaeological. Others remain ready for work. By giving each the same spare landscape, I wanted to erase the usual hierarchy between them. A small weathered rowboat can possess the same presence as a massive commercial vessel.

The absence of water is deliberate. On land, these boats cannot perform the function for which they were built.

Their forms become more visible: the sweep of a hull, the geometry of rigging, the architecture of a cabin, the scars of age. Familiar objects become strange again.

There are no crews here and almost no destinations. The horizon remains, but the journey has stopped.

What remains is the vessel itself—its shape, its history, its endurance, and the evidence that someone once depended upon it.

— Michael Domino
Port Jefferson, New York