Salt Water Cure
Some things you can paint for the rest of your life and never get to the bottom of. The sea is one of them.
I’ve been staring at the colors within blue.
It started in February, in an old worn notebook, far from the studio. Oil stick, pastel, pencil, a mess of marks trying to catch the mist and spray of waves reaching into the sky. I wasn’t trying to paint the sea so much as trying to stay close to it a little longer.
Back in the studio, that notebook page became the seed for something larger. Two new works, each made of two three by six foot panels joined together. My first time painting at six by six feet, and I liked the challenge of it more than I expected. Going bigger meant the sea could move the way it actually moved that day, in wild, choppy sweeps instead of something placid or picturesque.
Acrylic, paper, layer after layer. Friends added collage pieces to one of the early layers, their marks are now buried somewhere underneath mine, part of the history of the piece even if no one can see them anymore. Then I sanded back through it all and uncovered these blurred fields of watery color, places where the sea seems to drip down into the land, pushing up against a white, overcast sky.
Isak Dinesen wrote that the cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea. I think about that a lot in the studio. I could paint the sea for the rest of my life and still not get anywhere near its depth, its mercurial nature. Some things aren't meant to be solved, right? Just returned to, again and again, like something you know will always be there waiting.
Next time I’ll be thinking about what gets buried in a painting, and what it means to sand away something good to find what’s underneath it.
If you’re in DC and want to get your hands in the layers yourself, I have a few spots left in my Gelli plate printing workshop on July 7. Details and tickets are here: Beginner Gelli Plate Printing Workshop
after a complex week I bolted awake in the middle of night and read this— exactly what I needed.