In “First Around,” one of Willard Bond’s best-known paintings, two towering yachts are caught in a roiling sea. The one to the fore is rounding a mark, sharply heeled in the wind, its crew crammed by the upper rail to keep it from capsizing.
All this is captured in Bond’s bold, swirling strokes that verge on the abstract.
“Bond creates paintings, not around what boats look like, but what it feels like to be aboard or nearby, watching them move fast — big, speeding boats, often only inches apart,” J. Russell Jinishian wrote in his 2003 book, “Bound for Blue Water,” a comprehensive study of marine art.
Bond, whose images line the walls of thousands of homes — particularly those of avid sailors — died May 19 of congestive heart failure in Yountville, Calif. He was 85.
