He would go about this in a few different ways. For one thing, Gavin used real yacht sails—two mainsails, one jib—as his canvases, exploiting their translucency to depict teeming night skies with dazzling effect. The material “had a lot of interesting, exciting properties that lend themselves to [depicting] stars,” he says. “From afar, it looks like the stars are painted, but actually, everything is painted but the stars.” It also placed the new paintings within a rich—and ancient—artistic tradition: Before canvas was produced explicitly for painters’ use, artists in Renaissance-era Venice would repurpose excess sailcloth, then made from linen or cotton fibers.
Additionally, scrapping a nascent idea to erect a wall that would “sort of offset the work from the space,” Gavin decided to suspend the three biggest paintings—one of which is an astonishing 46 feet tall and 26 feet wide, the most massive he has ever made—from the Restoration Hall’s ceiling, embracing its vastness. (The other four works that round out the show are tiny, circular paintings “of individual stars,” per Gavin, which he’s hidden throughout the venue.)
Although Gavin has been in Newport for several days when we speak, he sadly hasn’t had the chance to do much seafaring himself: “I’ve just been inside all the time, ironically,” he admits with a laugh. He does, however, have a different sort of adventure on the horizon. Shortly after the opening of Seven Paintings, Gavin is off to Paris for a residency at the Palais Garnier. “You’re living at the opera house and engaging with the dancers and singers, and then something comes out of that experience,” he explains of the program, called Project 12. Needless to say, Gavin is ready to take the plunge: “I’m so excited.”
“Cy Gavin: Seven Paintings” is on view from Monday to Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at IYRS School of Technology & Trades in Newport, Rhode Island, through August 29.