NAUTICAL

My first encounter with sailing was at the tender age of six. It was on my father’s 19’ Rhodes in the bay offshore from Oxnard Ca. The thrill of flying with the wind with the boat heeled over and my dad’s steady, comptent presence at the tiller left an indelible impression.
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The paintings in this ongoing series are both a tribute to my father who loved to sail, and a revisiting of times that held moments of awe, joy and the spirit of adventure. Harmonizing with wind and waves, being attuned to tides, time and seasons, plus catching fish for dinner all gave me a sense of peace and place.
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Each piece in this series focuses on a memory of a place and time. I choose to paint in an abstract representational style to convey both my inner experience as well as depict features of the outer reality. I begin each piece with a completely non objective underpainting in acrylics upon which I build the image, leaving artifacts of the underpainting to interact with the final work. Included in some pieces are parts of nautical charts that belonged to dad.