Zen Seascape

"Seascape Sunset"
oil on panel, 2009
3.5" x 5" (cm x cm)
private collection

Here is a small seascape study I did as gift a few years back.
Besides the recent ones I have been doing, exploring different directions, I also have been looking back at earlier ones I did.
Sometimes I had thoughts, recorded in these studies, that got lost in the shuffle of other projects and paintings.
Now is the time to consider which ones I will reincarnate for a seascape series.

I stood on the cliffs just before sunset on a calm day at low tide, the water smooth as glass except near the shore where the gentle waves washed over the rocks, radiating these circular ripples. The deep rich saturated colors of sunset reflecting off the water like a stained glass window.

I remember it as having a zen like quality and realized that a view including the sky would turn out to be just another sunset painting and that the sensation (zensation?) was actually in the foreground, no distant horizon was needed. In fact including too much might have defeated it altogether.

I am reminded the sea has many moods, from the stormy to the meditative.264