Beach House #1

No. 1 of 3 in the Beach House series

Beach House #1 holds the feeling of standing at the water’s edge, where sunlight, wind, and memory turn the surface into something constantly shifting. From across the room, its grid settles into a calm field of turquoise and sea-glass blue. As you move closer, individual pieces emerge like fragments of weathered beach houses, old maps, handmade quilts, and summers spent beside the lake.

The painting curves gently inward, like water drawing back before a wave rises. It is the first work in a planned three-piece series. The next two panels will curve outward, allowing the complete group to move across the wall like a sequence of softly rolling waves.

The surface is built from the leather of 17 invasive grass carp removed from the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers near Kentucky. I cut the leather into small squares and painted each one with three passes of airbrushed color: one from directly above, one darker pass from the left, and one lighter pass from the right. The shifting angles emphasize the natural scale pockets in the leather, creating the impression of ripples, currents, and wind moving across water.

Pearlescent pigments rest on the highest points of the texture, causing the surface to shimmer subtly as the light changes. Tiny brass tacks anchor the squares to the deep charcoal cradle like map pins or quilt knots. Several squares are pieced together by hand with a baseball stitch that follows the rhythm of the scale pattern.

The colors began with a photograph of Lake Erie, the Great Lake nearest the Ohio town where I grew up. Some squares feel like rough water on a windy day. Others are quiet and nearly still. Together, they become a wall of shifting remembrances that resolves into calm when you step back.