What started my journey to uncover this song and series of paintings was a solitary walk at the nearby beach and a free-write in my sketchbook, some of which I will share here:
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“There is an ocean between us, and the tide pulls in and out as the will of the moon defines us. I expose my depths to the sun as tenderness burns and boils in the heat. You shout close fisted and cause a retreat.
Shouldn’t I love my anemones?
The tide comes in and cools my burns of the day, a salty heal meant for the ages. I have evolved in your arms and you, in mine. We are who we are because of the other.
A pendulum made fun by climbing toddlers.
Sometimes I want to drown in the low tide, in the muck, when my luck should be with me. I can handle the deep waters, but when I see barnacles bankrupt I get choked up and die at the sight of the sunburnt sea grass that never was to be.
I embrace the chance to know you on the terms of jigsawed arms. I ever stretch around you and see you through and through.”
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It occurred to me that at the heart of any relationship, we have an ebb and flow of vulnerability, and as we navigate this as best we can, there are things that are out of our control, and that happen to us and with us. This is what makes the human experience so nuanced and beautiful. We can decide how much to “let a person in” but they get to decide how they will reciprocate that sentiment. So, we are only one part of this equation. That’s what makes a story, or an event, or ultimately our participation in the human experience.
The lyrics and music of the song evolved over months and months of coming back to it. I treated it gently and with patience. I did a lot of editing, changing things, deciding the orders of the sections, and how to get the song to swell, and come back to resolve musically. I worked on the song along the same months I produced the paintings. I visualized the paintings as I was sitting at the piano, and sometimes the lyrics of the song played in my head as I was painting.
When I wrote the lyrics “I see the lay of the land like a map of us too”, I very directly understood the parallel of relating that idea to the paintings. Each one seemed to be a new variation of an emotional map of a relationship. When this clicked I got very excited because the visual possibilities became endless!
I wanted to give myself the chance to iterate upon the idea several times so that it would become as 3D as I was experiencing it. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to do a series of paintings. They started off with a few rules. First of all they would have a horizon line at approximately the same place on the canvas. And on this horizon line, there would be two points at almost the same place in order to represent the 2 people in a relationship that would serve as the two points of tension in the visual representation of the song. Some would simply be an interplay between these two (like Ravel) and some would serve as an “above ground” and “below ground” (like Lissom).
I limited the colors to have no yellow, and to be reminiscent of sky and land. The rest of the color choices were based on how I felt when singing the song, acknowledging that certain colors remind me of some of those feelings. As an example, bright cherry red reminds me of intensity, or when I connect in an intense way, or maybe the colors in general are more saturated. The whites/greys/light blues are more of the relaxed areas, where I know the person is around, but don’t need to engage in communicating. That feeling of “I don’t know where they are or what they’re doing right now, but I’m okay with that”. There are down times in healthy relationships, that’s what makes them sustain for a long time because you can just relax!
I also intentionally mirrored the relationship with “in focus” areas being when we communicate clearly, or feel close, and the “out of focus” areas when we are more likely to have misunderstandings, or distance.
Since I had all of the paintings open at once, I felt a lot of freedom in the layering process and being in a different area of the relationship. I felt like an emotional surgeon, getting into the nitty gritty of the cells.
The song started out very intimately about two singular people and the togetherness they experience. At the time of writing it, and throughout my explorations I felt compelled to take it out of the insulated one on one relationship, to a broad idea that we are better off if we are all unified.
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Here are the lyrics of the song:
Oscillate
The Tide goes low and I go with it
Dried out sand burning my feet
I don’t know where it will take me
Or how it will change me, but I know I must go
Pull me back, flood my wounds
Bring my eyes up to yours, just like before
Rest your chin on the shelf of my shoulder
Speak your mind, I can take it I swear
Pick a point out on the horizon
And let’s put our eyes on what takes us from here
I know you and what we’ve been through
I see the lay of the land like a map of us too
What’s not fair
What’s not just in the world
You draw the lines
I pull them tight
And we shelter the storm
It’s easy when you say
We will be alright one day
One day
As the moon pulls and pushes the tide
I try to decide which way I will go
Expose or hide it all away
Let the water disguise what’s inside
I know that when we’re one
We are strong
We are brave
We’re better than before
And we shelter the storm
It’s easy when you say
We will be alright one day, one day
As the moon pulls and pushes the tide
I try to decide which way I will go
Expose or hide it all away
Let the water disguise what’s inside
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There are 8 paintings in the series so far, and you can see them online HERE. They are large format 40X65”, so best seen in person, with headphones listening to the song of course!
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I was very pleased to be able to share a few of these paintings at Ryan James Fine Arts in Kirkland June 2024. In December, I got the chance to record the song, and I will be releasing it on the album entitled "Hold the Line" later this year. In the meantime I am showing a few of the paintings again at Ryan James Fine Arts for the month of April 2025, and you can catch më performing "Oscillate" locally as :::Tether the Star:::