Spending a fortunate amount of time on a boat, I look at the water a lot. I have been struggling to capture its power and beauty in a unique and telling way. During the summer of 2020 I went on a three week sailing voyage. Spending 21 days looking at the water, day after day, as the light and weather changed was transformative. On the trip I had given myself the creative brief of making a watercolor every morning with the water we were anchored in. The practice of doing this made me pay attention to the color of the light in a much different way than photographing it had.

My connection to water is strong: I am a Cancer, I am a sailor, I have worked for Naval Architects, and I am most at peace when near water. Naturally I am therefore concerned about rising sea levels and polluted waterways. I marvel at how we humans keep rebuilding after every flood as though the effects of the next superstorm will be different. They will. They will be worse. Soon we will not be able to hold the water back and I have been searching for a way to express that concern. Strangely the answer came when I moved into a new studio in December of 2020 and began working with water inside. It was there that I began to paint with light through water while thinking of Homer and Turner’s powerful sea paintings and Richter and Keifer’s beautiful abstractions.

Painting has always visually interested me and I try to make photographs that look like paintings.I am interested in people’s perceptions of what they see in my photographs and their reaction when they find out they are not paintings. It is my hope that looking at the work might make the viewer question their presumptions about other things as well.

The name of the series Translucent Turbidity means:
Translucent (of a substance) allowing light, but not detailed shapes, to pass through; semitransparent. Turbidity–the amount of solid particles that are suspended in water and that cause light rays shining through the water to scatter.