February 28, 2019
Nichole Robertson
The sea is big and old
"The sea is big and old." - Ernest Hemingway
Too simple for your taste? Perhaps he should have gone with "the sea is boundless and ancient," or "the expansive sea churns eternally." Hemingway would just as soon tuck a daisy behind the ear of a bull. Instead Hemingway gives us "big" and "old,”—words simple and true. We wanted to honor his unadorned, straight-shooting writing style and we kept coming back to this line, as there is so much to unpack in those six words.
For our illustration, we took our cue from Hemingway's words and his personification of the sea.
