Painting Memory, Fire, and Ocean

“To Say the Storm “

A Seascape Shaped by Loss and Change

“To Say the Storm “ abstract seascape, oil on unstretched canvas.

“To Say the Storm” is an abstract seascape I painted from memory, and the emotion, I felt when hearing of the Pacific Palisades fire. Thick with paint and layered like ocean weather, this piece came out of something personal: the loss of my longtime studio in Pacific Palisades. For 18 years in a trailer park called the Palisades Bowl, it was across from the beach I ran on every morning. The trailer along witht the whole mobile home park was destroyed in the recent wildfires.

What you see in the painting isn’t just waves. It is the debris, cloud, and runoff. It’s the storm you don’t name out loud.

Painting Through Fire and Water

“To Say the Storm “ abstract seascape, oil on unstretched canvas.

When the fires swept through the Palisades, they did more than destroy homes. They altered the coastline. Reports from early 2025 confirmed that ash, chemicals, and burned debris washed into the Pacific. This kind of pollution isn’t just visible on the beach, it enters the mind. It changes how you experience the beach, even if it looks the same from a distance.

This painting is built from that feeling. The thick blues and muddy grays are the sea taking on what the fires washed into it. The creamy whites aren’t just clouds. They are the smoke dissolving into fog.

Memory, Motion, and Metaphor

“To Say the Storm “ abstract seascape, oil on unstretched canvas.. This is how the painting looks as it is created - with the impasto, technique on the unstretched and esposed canvas

“To Say the Storm” is a metaphor. For me, for a place, for what’ is lost and still moving. The paint is laid down fast, heavy, and rough on purpose. I wasn’t trying to make it pretty. I was trying to make it feel what the fires were doing. The painting is also a memory of a place, and also a witness to what happens when fire’s debris meets water.