Waimanu by Mark Ley

Acrylic on canvas- unframed

48" 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.

Emerald green, windswept, folded into steep diagonal ridges that run like pali falling toward the sea. White crests catch the light along each edge, part surf line, part cliff spine, part something older that I can't name. Underneath, the surface is alive with turquoise, coral, and small flares of yellow, like sun through wet canopy, like a valley that has been keeping its own counsel for a thousand years.

I wanted the canvas to feel like standing in that wind. Thick, scraped, layered, a little wild at the edges. The kind of place where the veil between now and then is thin enough to feel on your skin. Waimanu holds an ancient, spiritual Hawaiʻi, and I tried to paint the hush of it, and the pulse underneath. - Mark K Ley