Grano e Mare

Two banks of tall sea oats part like curtains, opening a narrow passage through the dunes toward a luminous window of turquoise surf. A pale sandy path, dappled with lavender-grey shadow, sweeps up from the bottom edge and pulls the eye irresistibly toward the water. Above, a brooding grey-blue sky takes nearly half the canvas, and a single white gull hangs in the upper air: scale, stillness, salt wind.

The grasses are the painting's physical presence: warm gold, ochre, rust-rose and cream, their seed heads built up in thick dabs of stiff paint that stand proud of the canvas and catch real light. By contrast the sea and sky are brushed thin and smooth, so that the foreground literally rises in relief against the distance it frames. Dry-brushed dark strokes scratch through the dunes like wind-bent stems.

Wheat-gold against teal, terracotta against slate: late summer on an empty shore, breezy and melancholy and inviting all at once. The viewer stands at the threshold of the beach, one step from the water.

The title keeps the artist's own tongue: grano e mare, wheat and sea.