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RITA ROGERS ON HOW THE "CHARLIE'S RIVER" SERIES CAME TO BE
AFTER the death of Charles Duncan, my longtime partner, I wanted to make a goodbye painting and sought inspiration in a loose-leaf book of navigational charts he had drawn and annotated while a towboat pilot and captain on the Lower Mississippi. There are twenty-three paintings, oil on canvas, 36"x40" and 40"x46".
EACH painting follows the river's outline faithfully but is very different in color and composition. The shape and lane line have been carefully graphed up in the traditional manner. The rest is not. The narrative thread is chronological, as the series moves through my recovery from a paralyzing back injury to Charlie's death a short time after my leaving a nursing home.
CHARLIE'S early career was as a towboat pilot and captain on the Mississippi River. Later, in Newport, he was a sign painter, specializing in custom neon signs, and he was a four-time elected Newport City Councilman.
HIS charts were created for personal use while towing massive chains of commercial barges along the river. The notes are made in many different inks and scripts, marking the changes as they became visible. They meticulously note the maneuvers he devised to deal with the legendary river’s peculiarities, hazards, currents, and depths: "Do not come out wide ... water goes down at Willow Point ... ease back on engine RPMs to steer….” He constantly spoke and wrote about his time as a pilot and authored a book, “You’re Looking at My River” – illustrated with his own cartoons – about the culture of people who worked the boats.
UNCONSCIOUSLY, my paintings became a narrative of injury and recovery, loss and
grieving. The final painting, #23, embodied what I wanted for the first one. Each painting presented irresistible challenges for the next. I was not trying to illustrate anything. Whatever may have been in my mind was way in the back until the series was complete. The whole is greater than any part.
THERE is a confluence of dominant water resources – Rhode Island's substantial sea
coast and bay, and America’s largest river, the Mississippi. While a river and a seacoast are very different, there are similarities in how both shape their region’s commerce and culture.
TOGETHER, the paintings and charts present an experience of seeing the same physical
entity, a historic river, in endless variations, changing hourly and seasonally in the way our lives never remain at rest.