The wine-dark sea VI

by Matthew Whittall

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<p>The
 Mediterranean looms large in my family history and genealogy. Learning 
the mythology of Greece and Turkey as a child through books and bedtime 
stories, I came to associate this body of water with mystery, no small 
amount of adventure and, despite my strong physical and psychological 
attachment to the North, a distant, muted sense of ultimate home. As I 
draw primarily on landscape for creative impetus, during a trip to the 
region in 2007, I expected to find in the lands of my ancestors a potent
 new source of ideas.</p><article><p>Although the vistas were arresting and beautiful, they did not 
resonate in me on a deep level. What I – a northerner by more than birth
 and temperament, it would seem – was allowed to carry away from that 
trip were merely fond recollections of a foreign place, profoundly 
“other” from my experience: the iconic, archetypal “Mother Sea” and its 
numberless shades of blue, the quality of the sunlight, the smell of 
flowers and herbs in the air. These are the impressions informing The 
wine-dark sea, a dreamlike postcard written after the fact, through a 
haze of memory.</p></article>

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