Ocean Swells

Ocean Swells presents two ambiguous figures set within a surreal coastal landscape. One figure turns away, her face illuminated by a soft orange glow, while the other gazes directly at the viewer from the shadows. By removing clear identity from the subjects and using exaggerated colours, I aimed to create a dreamlike landscape that resists specificity and invites introspection.

I painted the sky a fluorescent turquoise to deliberately contrast with the bright orange glow of a bag in the foreground, its form abstracted to resemble a campfire at first glance. This intentional ambiguity deepens the painting’s surreal and dreamlike quality.

Embedded into the landscape is a silkscreen print of a vintage archival image of Bermuda, seamlessly integrated into the cliffside. Though it visually merges with the painting, it also introduces a separate “portal” into another time and dimension of Bermuda.

Time is a central concept in this work. The main image was derived from a photograph I took years ago, brought into the present through the slow and deliberate process of oil painting. In contrast, the archival print was created using silkscreen, a fast, imprecise process that introduces a sense of immediacy and chance. This juxtaposition between methods mirrors the tension between memory and immediacy, slowness and speed, the past and the present.