Fighting with a Loaded Brush: “The Ocean & The Girl”

There's a sincerity born only of destruction — a leaving out that, paradoxically, brings a fragment fully into focus, the way a rediscovered part can come to describe the whole.

I began this piece as a painted drawing. In a few quiet tones, I rendered a woman — she reminded me of my daughter — walking the beach. There was wind and surf. She carried a sand bucket and felt resilient, strong, aware of the elements around her but moving forward through them anyway. I thought I was finished. I wasn't done.

Paintings are funny that way. They speak to you from corners. You'll pass one crossing the studio, headed toward something else entirely, and it will grab your hem as you go by, nagging you to reconsider. That's what happened one morning — brush already loaded, headed for another canvas — and I stopped. I unloaded the brush there instead.

The painting needed the actual marks of wind and water. It needed a fight, right there on the scene — push, slash, start, and start again. The sand showed up too, laying itself over the movement like a flying carpet. The salmon underneath read as firm, steady, ready to be challenged by more motion. The whole thing evolved quickly after that, the elements fighting their way toward balance.

Stepping back, I saw she was still there. Strong, yet human, against the nature around her. It was her. It was the moment. It was done.

The figure — almost life-size — hadn't been lost at all. She'd only been preserved, folded into the motion of wind, tide, and shore.

The Ocean and the Girl, oil on canvas, 36 x 60", $2800