OCEAN ABSTRACTS | 2025

The unique qualities of Long Island's East End – its light reflecting on vast bodies of water and its flat pastoral landscapes create a unique environment that has inspired artists for generations. Pollock, Krasner, Motherwell, Rothko, all painted here, inspired by surrounding ocean landscapes. This series captures the changing Atlantic ocean and light as experienced over the course of the summer from the beach in Quogue, Long Island. There's something mystical about the ocean's edge that draws us in. Perhaps it's encoded in our DNA—the pull toward the place where life began, where our ancestors first crawled from sea to shore. For many, the longing to be near water runs deep, an ancient recognition of home. This series explores that primal connection, examining the blurred boundary between ocean and land. The beaches of Long Island never stop moving. Sand shifts with every tide, carving sandbars and channels that can last only hours or, maybe days, before the water reshapes them. A place where destruction and creation can be witnessed as beauty. This past summer, an offshore hurricane pounded the beach. As the powerful waves hit the dunes you couldn't tell where land ended and sea began. The ocean overtook solid ground; the sand turned to liquid. But what at first looked like shear chaos revealed something beautiful and simple—everything flowing together, no real border between sea and sand. This phenomenon called for a different photographic approach—a visual syntax that would capture not only the appearance of this borderless state, but its essential nature. How could a still image show the endless exchange of solid and liquid, between permanence and change? By moving my camera with the waves, timing each exposure to their speed, I dissolved the line between elements. Colors bleed and merge like watercolors in rain. The eye searches for familiar anchors—horizon, shoreline, breaking wave—but finds instead an imagined ocean landscape.