Evening Surf, Purple Sea
An oil on canvas (27 × 36 inches), painted in 2019, depicting Atlantic surf at the close of day. The title sets the scene precisely: the sea has shifted into the deep purples and blue-greys that come after the sun drops below the horizon, while gold persists only along the breaking crests, catching the last residual light.
The subject belongs to a long tradition of marine painting attentive to transitional light, the brief interval when colour drains from the water but has not yet surrendered entirely to darkness. Working in oil, the painter would have had full command of the tonal range this moment demands, from the dense, saturated darks of the open water to the warm, luminous flicker at each wave's edge. Whether the handling is loose and gestural or more carefully built up in layers is not recorded here, but the palette implied by the title, purple sea against residual gold, suggests a composition organised around contrast rather than gradation.