Blue Pacific
May 2010 (last viewing 30 May 2010)
The Wine Bar, Half Moon Bay, CA

These pieces began as experimental cyanotypes made during a trip to French Polynesia. The process seemed to be a good technique to describe the beautiful changing blues of the ocean and sky. There, the plentiful sunlight provided the exposing light source, but the inspiration for the finished artwork didn’t come until several years later – after a visit to Hawaii. I then decided to add smaller framed evocative elements, in order to enhance and enlarge the meaning of the central cyanotypes.

I have always loved that our ocean is called the Pacific – the calm, the peaceful – perhaps an odd name for something that can be as powerful and destructive as any force in nature. But through its broad expanse of color, its sharing the scene with the sky, and its richness of life contained within, it has always seemed a perfect model of calm, possibility, and beauty to me. And even though I love the California Pacific coast I have been raised near, the Pacific seems at its epitome when surrounding Hawaii. This artwork is a paean to the color, calm, and possibilities that can be present mid-Pacific.