Cape Ann Shoreline, 40 x 40 x 3 inches.

My seascape paintings act as a metaphor for life’s journey.  The ocean water is soft and cool at the shoreline, but, when the weather conditions are right, the ocean tide relentlessly crashes against the hard rocks.  The rocks weigh much more than the water, but the strength of the crashing waves can literally move the rocks into new formations. Ultimately, the rocks are smoothed by the water, and over time, they will disintegrate into pebbles of sand.

The crashing waves represents how life challenges us-often unexpectedly.  These sometimes-violent storms shift us much like the waves shift the formations of the rocks.  We long for the stillness of the tide pool, but we find our strength when we are challenged by the storms.

Similarly, we want to see ourselves strong like the rocks, able to weather the most violent storms.  But time softens us, heals us, the storms we weather wizen us.  We are smoothed at the edges and anticipate the next storm, for which we increasingly know we can weather.

This metaphor for life is why I have returned to the subject of rocks and water as life’s journey through-out my career.  Since starting out on my journey as an artist, I saw this metaphorical connection between rocks and water as symbolic of life's journey, a metaphor that still calls to me, just as the ocean still calls to me.