across waters
dispatches from my inner canvas / making art by the sea
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I’m riding the Amtrak train, watching the fireworks of fall and reflecting on my first summer back in Lenni-Lenape ancestral lands aka New Jersey in six years.
When I landed here, after the wild ride leaving my studio in Berlin, I knew this would be the next clear step for both Bianca and I in our dream of living creatively.
I spent my childhood on the Jersey Shore and introducing Bianca to the best parts of the area was true medicine, jumping into the Atlantic, tasting farm stand tomatoes, scoring the slim season of donut peaches and shucking sweet corn.
On my birthday in September, we walked along Island State Beach Park for the first time, the most wild expanse of the shore I’ve ever seen (vast dunes, low-growing native trees and shrubs), giving me a sense of what this land looked like before it was developed and people claimed to own the beach.
I made time to dive back into my sketchbooks and paint new land and seascapes inspired by my travels of the last year. Then, framed my work with what I could find around me, experimenting with teak wood cut-offs to find a simple and elegant design.
This new collection of gouache paintings is called 𝚊𝚌𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚜 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚜, available at Be Free Creations in Point Pleasant, NJ. If you’re not living locally and would like a print or a bespoke original, please reach out.
My process is a traveller’s approach to painting. I pack a few tubes of paint, my two most versatile brushes, a tin for mixing colours and some loose brown paper. My new video up on YouTube details some of the process, tell me what you liked and what could be improved.
Most of my creative time is shared between painting and music. Only this summer, I had the headspace to unify my ideas and work with what’s essential to me.
With my acoustic guitar and mic set up in a closet to record music demos, I listened to the hum of my new but familiar environment. I waited for the wind to strum the chimes and recorded crickets in the back, while writing new songs.
I feel the stark contrast between the sounds of the morning ocean waves, blaring stereos, idling car exhausts, and outspoken New Yorkers. I also listen to the amplified cries of resistance to the 75-year militant occupation in Gaza.
As I finish writing, the train is back in Penn Station and I jump on the M to Bushwick to see the band Tilden, with dear friends playing songs from their forthcoming album.
I feel immense gratitude in sharing my creative journey with you, it’s a privilege.
All of our voices are needed more than ever to demand an end to the violent apartheid regime and rampant genocide, whether it occurs in Gaza, or anywhere else.
May we rise together and find our creative outlets for a collective liberation. From the river to the sea.
With love,
cb