"Drowning In Blue"

Drowning in Blue came from my first real journey to understand the South Pacific. I traveled to the Island Kingdom of Tonga with my eldest son Brandon. Two and a half hours east of Fiji by plane. We stayed in a little fale, that sat out over the water in a little village at the end of the road, Viamalo. We swam with whales, ate native foods. We spent our time learning, snorkeling, immersed in the customs, daily lives and hardships of the people living in our local village. There's no natural source of fresh water on some of these islands. It's mostly purified gray water. Yet, there we were, listening to the water beneath us, with care not to underestimate a large storm or over-eager tide. I'd never felt the color of water the way I did there. It was immense (literally), overwhelming. I came away with my whole person, every bit of my being filled with the colors, sounds, smells and tastes of our enormous blue oceans. My trip to Tonga profoundly changed how I look at art, at color and the risks I'm willing to take to produce work that expresses how beautiful and overwhelming our world is. This painting helps me to remember what it's like to bob around like a little cork in a wide and deep blue ocean with a humpback whale turning over beneath you before she flips out of the water with a wink and a wave.