Lala by Mark Ley

Acrylic on canvas- unframed

60" h x 48" w (can be hung vertically or horizontally)

Growing up on Hawaii Island, Mark Ley spent his life in the ocean. Surfing it, diving it, chasing it across coastlines and continents. From the reef passes of Central America to the lava shelves of Hawaiʻi. Everything he makes begins there. Not as metaphor. As fact.

She has no manners. That's the first thing you learn about the ocean when a hurricane sits offshore and starts breathing. All the postcard blue goes out of her and what's left is this: iron reds, bruised maroon, the gold of something burning underwater. She stops being scenery and becomes weather with a grudge.

I painted LALA while the storm was still working. Not after, when the tide charts have been squared away and everyone's swapping wave-height numbers like box scores. During. When the surge was stacking up brown and the wind was writing its own diagonals across everything, and the only honest response was to let the brush go sideways with it.

People want the sea to be a mood. Calm, contemplative, good for the soul. But she is not here for your soul. She is a mass of moving water the size of a country, indifferent to your plans, and every so often she reminds the coastline exactly who was here first. The pink and the turquoise flecks in there are not softness. That's the foam getting shredded, the light trying to survive the churn.

Respect isn't fear. Respect is knowing the difference between a wave and a warning, and painting the warning anyway.

She named herself. I just held the brush. - Mark K Ley