NARRATOR: John Marin is best known for his seascapes: watercolors, and later, oils, that seem to capture the elemental forces of nature. As a young man Marin was interested in Cubism and other forms of European modernism. But he took them in a lyrical direction rather than an analytical one. He used loose brushwork and broad colors to suggest vitality and movement. Like Georgia O’Keeffe and Arthur Dove, his peers in the Stieglitz circle, Marin’s paintings occasionally push his natural subjects to the edge of abstraction.
