Painter Rez Williams of West Tisbury has been creating a distinctive and deeply personal chronicle of New Bedford’s iconic fishing boats for nearly fifteen years, and his enthusiasm for them shows no signs of diminishing.
“For me with the fishing fleet, it’s the ‘otherness’ that really attracted me initially….When you go to New Bedford you’re in a completely different world,” he says, noting the dark prevalence of crime and AIDS there. “But then you see the fishing boats…like hot rods. They’re colorful, and a little crazy….Their boats would sink for want of a light bulb in the engine room to find the cause of a leak coming in.”
Rez describes the boats as personal expressions for the fishermen, but as for getting personally closer to the men themselves: “They know I’m a WASP from the Vineyard, plus I probably look like a lawyer for their wife…so I keep it low key….I have had a ride on a boat once, but that’s about as far as I’d like to go.”
Read the complete article from Martha's Vineyard Magazine.