SEAWALL

Aug 01, 2024

A girl stares down a concrete causeway descending into the rippling ocean. She wears shorts patterned with pink 5-pointed blossoms and a plain white shirt. Long blonde hair falls to her waist. Against her hip rests a ball held as if her play was interrupted to stare into the distance. Milky green-blue water froths climbing the causeway. The leading edge creeps up toward the low seawall on which she stands. Broken rebar juts up from the foundation. Intact to her left, the rusted metal forms a railing with the leading edge painted with yellow warning stripes. — SEAWALL (2009), Oil - 36" x 24"

The other side of the ocean from CAUSEWAY.

My conception of SEAWALL changed as I was painting, which you can see from photos taken of the work in progress. As the figure of the seated girl became indistinct, I realized she shouldn’t be in the composition at all, and she was painted out of all the subsequent work.

In my personal work, I often use the faded star as a symbol of despair and disenchantment. But this painting offers hope. We find the possibilities of a brighter future in our children.

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Additional images from SEAWALL

LEFT: Detail from SEAWALL featuring a girl with long blonde hair staring down a causeway that descends into rippling ocean. She holds a rubber ball at her hip. The rubber surface shines with highlights on marbleized pink cast by light from behind. RIGHT: Detail from CAUSEWAY featuring a nude female with deep bronze skin standing at the edge of a causeway that gradually slopes into gray green water. With a white blindfold knotted over straight black hair, she can't see the path ahead but she can surely feel foggy atmosphere on her bare skin and the water on her foot as she takes a tentative step forward into the unknown. With each step, the rough stone path is textured with fossil record (trilobites, ammonites, plants, fish, etc). A glass triangular pyramid rests on the stone in the immediate foreground. Pylons set with red bicycle reflectors jut out of the water beside the causeway. The material of the posts changes from rough wood to carved stone to formed metal as the causeway descends symbolizing the progression of technology running alongside evolution in the fossil record. — Details from SEAWALL and CAUSEWAY

LEFT: Detail from SEAWALL featuring the inner circle of the curving seawall where a wedge of concrete rises out of the water. Textured diagonals in the concrete run back toward the viewer. A line of indecipherable numbers and letters stenciled on black run cut off in the lower right foreground. RIGHT: Figure study for SEAWALL featuring a girl in white shirt and shorts patterned with 5-pointed pink blossoms. She holds a blue rubber ball at her hip. The broken base of a street sign juts out of the concrete. — Additional detail and figure study for SEAWALL

LEFT: Photo of SEAWALL (early work in progress) on an easel in the studio. A pair of post it notes are taped over the wedge of wall that rises in the inner circle of the seawall. The first reads "paint the kids." The second is unreadable. In the lower right of the photo, you can see the corner of a charcoal sketch of LUMEN 9. RIGHT: Closer view of SEAWALL (early work in progress). Only the concrete structures have been blocked in with rusty rebar jutting up: the that extends to the upper left, the low seawall curves inward to the foreground, a wedge of wall rises inside that circle, and another low line of wall runs parallel to it. — Early work in progress photos of SEAWALL

LEFT: Work in progress photo of SEAWALL a little further along. The water is now a simple wash of green. To the concrete structure, two children have been added. The older blonde haired girl is standing. A younger, dark haired girl sits in pink dress with a blue ball in her lap. RIGHT: Work in progress photo of SEAWALL. The underpainting has been washed over with blue so everything is looser and the figures are now hazy. The standing girl is rendered ghostly in white. The pink of the younger girls dress and the blue of the ball still show through. — The blue wash went over the figures and green like a tide of color coming in on top of what preceded it

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SEAWALL

Additional images from SEAWALL

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