Katahdin: Perspectives from the Knife Edge

Katahdin: Perspectives from the Knife Edge traces the creative journey of artist Stephen Hannock as he worked toward his monumental painting Luminous Lakes Below The Knife Edge, Mt. Katahdin, Maine (2020), now in the collection of the Farnsworth Art Museum. Distinctive to his practice is the method of sketching Katahdin in situ from the seat of a small aircraft, capturing the mountain from an aerial vantage that few painters have attempted, and his use of palimpsest, layering translucent handwritten text, giving his finished, polished canvases the quality of accumulated time and memory.

The book gathers the sketches and studies that preceded the finished work, offering a view into Hannock's process of seeing and distilling a landscape of profound cultural significance. Maine's Katahdin is the terminus of the Appalachian Trail and the spiritual heart of the Penobscot Nation and has long drawn artists and writers from Frederic Edwin Church to Henry David Thoreau.

Accompanying the sketches are essays by the Christiane Ellis Valone Curator of American Paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Franklin Kelly, as well as Véronique Plesch, the Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art at Colby College. Each brings a critical and historical perspective to Hannock's work and to the tradition of American landscape painting. Also included is a poem from Mihku Paul, a First Nations poet, visual artist, storyteller, and activist born into the Maliseet Nation and a member of Kingsclear First Nation in New Brunswick, Canada. Paul's voice grounds the book in Indigenous relationship to this land. She has also contributed hand-drawn “double-curve” illustrations to the layout of the publication. These designs symbolize balance, interconnectedness, and the natural world. The motif remains an important expression of Wabanaki cultural identity.