The Seventh Wave

This painting was commissioned. It portrays a story related to me—a day kayaking in Barkley Sound, when friends unexpectedly encountered a ‘rogue wave’ that rose up on what was otherwise a relatively calm day. The sunshine ‘haloes’ are my addition to represent a bit of providence that intervened that day, allowing the story to be told as a very exciting adventure instead of a disaster of capsizing or worse. Rogue waves are a coastal phenomenon, where waves of exceptional size rise up in patterns of approximately every seventh wave. While I know I could never represent this day exactly as it was, I hope the woman in the red kayak, receiving this painting, recognizes herself in it and enjoys the painting as a reminder of her exciting day and of her friends who shared it with her, including the man who commissioned the painting.