“Ocean Rhapsody” was created during several off- season months spent on the outer Cape, around Truro. Its quiet world of moors, ocean bluffs and rolling dunes inspired these paintings. I sought to capture the atmospheric charge and exquisite rough beauty of the cold months by the sea.
The main players in most of these paintings are the ice floes themselves. In some treatments I softened them to be almost cloud-like, and in others, brisk strokes render them ragged as if raging against the frozen shoreline. Additionally, the works are permeated by a silence that was perhaps inspired by cold winter days, but more likely it speaks to my own wish to simply be a vessel of expression.
The name, Ocean Rhapsody came through a conversation with my young son who is a classical pianist. I think of this series as a single work, episodic yet
integrated. I wanted to use a musical term to recall a moment of first inspiration, listening to the sound of the heaving ice floes. I heard it like a yearning, haunting song from the deep. When searching for the right musical term, I showed my son the paintings and without hesitation he shot out: “A rhapsody! It’s a rhapsody!” Such is the gift of someone who thinks in notes while we painters think in color and form.