Sea Bird Saga VI 1966

Wallace Bradstreet Putnam made this lithograph, Sea Bird Saga VI, at some point in the 20th century. It has a ghostly, urgent quality—a drama in blacks and grays. I can imagine the artist drawing and redrawing on the lithographic stone, trying to capture a feeling, not just a picture. The marks are restless, layered, as though the image keeps shifting, never quite settling into one fixed view. Look at how the seabirds are rendered with simple, direct strokes, suggesting their fleeting presence. And then there’s that lone figure standing on the rocks. What's he thinking? It reminds me of other artists like Odilon Redon, who were also into exploring the shadowy, mysterious sides of things. Putnam invites us to embrace ambiguity, to find our own meanings in the saga of the sea bird. It is a meditation on nature, memory, and the passage of time.