This large-scale painting, Surge, was inspired by a walk along the Carmel coast in California. I remember standing on a ledge, looking down at the powerful tide tearing into the sand—an almost drone-like perspective where the shoreline became both still and expectant, waiting for the ocean’s force to return. That sense of rhythm—the arc of breaking waves, the dapple and sprinkle of foam, the light left scattered on the beach—became the heart of the work.

The piece is composed of five panels, recalling a Japanese screen and suggesting a filmic sequence. A crashing wave is never still, and yet painting isolates a moment; the repetition of the panels captures both the motion and the stillness, the anticipation of what is yet to come. Much of the canvas remains raw linen, marked with drips of turpentine and sprays of paint, evoking the suspended energy of the wave about to overtake the beach.

Built with thick palette-knife strokes of oil and wax, the painting is both physical and sculptural. From the smallest dapples of reflected light to the sweeping arcs of the tide, the marks shift between abstraction and figuration—mere strokes up close, yet coalescing into the recognizable rhythm of the sea when seen from a distance. At its core, Surge is a meditation on presence and absence, positive and negative space, and the visceral energy of the ocean held, momentarily, in paint.