Purple Haze by Mark Ley

Acrylic on canvas- unframed

76" h x 26" 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.

Some of it begins quite literally in the water. For years I've practiced a kind of treasure hunting with my daughter. Scouring reefs, beaches, and back alleys for the things the ocean takes from her explorers. Surfboard fins ripped free by kelp. Sunglasses lost in the shorebreak. Dive masks drifting along sandy bottoms. Boards rescued from dumpsters and pulled from under porches. The sea is an honest thief; she takes what she wants and returns it changed, sanded soft, half-claimed. I've simply made it my business to be there when she gives things back.

The practice itself is old, far older than me. Gyotaku, the Japanese art of the fish print, born centuries ago when fishermen inked their catch to prove the size of the day's haul before anyone thought to call it art. It was a record before it was beauty. A document. A boast, maybe. I love that about it. The original Gyotaku artists weren't making decoration — they were making evidence.

That's what I make. Evidence.

Each relic is painted and pressed by hand to paper or canvas… one impression, one chance, no edits. The object decides half the outcome; I decide the rest, and the negotiation between us is the work. A twin fin leaves a different testimony than a single fin. A wave-battered deck prints its scars honestly. Every ding, delam, and repair job shows up in the ink like a fingerprint, because that's what it is.

The result is a one-of-one impression of an object with a story… documented provenance, a first life in the water and a second life on the wall. Nothing is replicated because nothing can be. The ocean doesn't repeat herself, and neither do I.  - Mark K Ley

Curious about the board? Read more here.