Literature

Following Before the Beginning Ends and End of Service, The Last Tide completes a quiet arc. From early watchfulness, to the heat of daily work, to a moment on the edge of letting go. These are not grand milestones. They are human thresholds. The kind that pass with little announcement, but mark us nonetheless.Here, a man stands by his boat, his tools at rest, his gaze elsewhere. Is this the end of a shift? A career? Or something larger still?

The painting holds that uncertainty gently. Is he stepping away by choice, into earned rest or because there is nothing left to fish, no one left to take over, no room left for him in a world reshaped by scale, speed, and systems?The composition is steady, reflective. Paul's brushwork has quietened here, less urgency, more air. The strokes are broad, almost sea-washed. Only the man's jacket flares warm against the cooler tones of boat and sky. It's not a portrait of despair. But it is a portrait of a man who knows what it is to be useful and knows what it feels like when usefulness becomes uncertain.

There is an added layer now, with Al and automation stirring similar fears across so many sectors. We are all beginning to ask: What happens when the work stops needing us? Who are we then? The painting doesn't answer. But it gives space for the question. It recalls the lines of an old sea shanty from whom my memory fails to recollect: Now the tide is turning, The lines are laid, the nets drawn in, And we are not what we were before, Nor shall be so again. The tide recedes. What remains is still a man, still standing.