Paths Of Passage

Block 4 — Tide And Terrain

1. Living Currents of the Coast

Capturing the intimate presence of wildlife and the rhythms of Long Island’s ecosystems—from owls over dunes to ospreys under moonlight.

2. Echoes of Craft and Kinship

Featuring generational carvings and sculptures made from reclaimed materials, these works honor ancestral memory, environmental reverence, and the artistry of stewardship.

3. Textures of Time and Transformation

Exploring the impermanence of life that contrast motion and stillness, decay and resilience, rust and rhythm—each piece inviting contemplation of nature’s enduring rhythms and the humility of our place within them.

Waves Of Tolerance

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

$24,192

  • It rises with force, then breaks with grace. A tremendous wave crashes onto the shore, its crest collapsing into a spray of salt and light. As droplets scatter upward, they catch the low-angle rays of the late-day sun—sunlight refracted through water vapor, splitting into a brief, brilliant rainbow. This optical phenomenon, born of physics, becomes something more: a symbol. The rainbow, long embraced by the LGBTQ+ community, speaks to diversity, pride, and the spectrum of human identity. 

    In this fleeting arc, nature mirrors society’s potential for inclusion. The wave, shaped by wind and tide, reflects the momentum of change—unpredictable, immense, and inevitable. Wave of Tolerance is a moment suspended between energy and elegance, science and spirit. It reminds us that even in tumult, light can find a way through—and when it does, it reveals the full spectrum of who we are.

Feathers In Frost

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

  • A flock of eider ducks cuts through the winter air above the sea, their wings steady against the cold. The males, sharply dressed in black and white, fly alongside the females, whose rufous brown plumage glows with understated richness. Together, they form a shifting pattern of contrast and cohesion—dark and light, bold and earthy—moving as one above the deep blue water.

    The backdrop is stark: a frigid coastal landscape where the wind bites and the sea churns. Yet the eiders are perfectly at home. Their thick down, prized for its insulating power, shields them from the chill; their bodies are built for this climate, for diving into icy depths and riding the gusts with ease. In flight, they seem both rugged and graceful—each wingbeat a testament to adaptation.

    This moment captures a portrait of resilience and beauty, of birds evolved for extremes yet flying with elegance. Against the cold palette of winter, the eiders bring warmth in form and color, a living harmony of survival and style.

$24,192

$24,192

Crowned By Light

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

$24,192

  • A solitary sandpiper moves through the saturated edges of a bog. Amid golden blooms and the first blush of autumn leaves, it searches—patient, precise—for a meal drawn from the wetland’s hidden bounty. With each careful stride, it probes the soft terrain, gleaning insects and invertebrates from the shallow waters and damp soil. The bird’s slender frame and mottled plumage blend seamlessly into the preserve’s layered palette, a living thread in the wetland’s seasonal mosaic.

    In early autumn, the bog is alive with color. Beyond the yellow wildflowers, the trees begin their slow transformation—leaves tinged with amber and rust drift toward the water, signaling the shift in season. The sandpiper moves through this scene with solitary determination, its presence a reminder of migration’s rhythm and the resilience of small travelers. It is part of the bog’s living story—one thread in a tapestry woven from water, root, and wing.

Previous Block

Tropical Drifter

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

$24,192

  • In what might be a statewide record, a flamingo arcs through the morning air above Georgica Pond, East Hampton, its wings outstretched wide. The early light catches its plumage—lush pink against the pond’s deep blue—casting a surreal contrast that feels borrowed from another latitude. Below, the water ripples with the hush of dawn, broken only by the bird’s reflection, briefly intact before it shatters with each beat of its wings.

    This is no ordinary sight in New York. The flamingo, likely swept north by a storm, moves with grace and urgency, its flight both spectacle and mystery. Locals gather at the shore, drawn by the improbable visitor, their eyes lifted to follow its path. The bird circles, then glides low, skimming the surface as if testing the welcome of this unfamiliar place.

    In this moment, the flamingo is both alien and emblematic—a burst of color in the landscape. Its presence reframes the pond, turning a familiar scene into something rare and exotic.

Morning Cacophony

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

$24,192

  • At first, silence. 

    The beach lies hushed beneath a blush of early light, waves whispering against the shore. Then, a stir—wings begin to slice the air, and the calls begin. Common terns wheel overhead, their cries sharp and insistent, stitching sound into the stillness. From the edge of dawn, the world begins to wake. One voice becomes many: gulls, terns, skimmers—all joining the chorus. 

    Shorebirds don’t whisper; they announce the day with wild urgency. Their cacophony is not noise—it’s life asserting itself. To wake with them is to witness the planet’s pulse returning, to feel the rhythm of a world that sings before it speaks.

    These birds are storytellers of the tide, guardians of the coast, and their voices remind us that nature wakes whether we notice or not. But when we do, it changes everything.

Falcon’s Topiary

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

  • A peregrine falcon stands atop a weathered, leafless tree on the beach, its posture taut, gaze fixed. The tree, stripped by salt and wind, offers no cover, only elevation. Below, the shoreline pulses with life, and the falcon’s presence has stirred it. A flock of shorebirds, startled into flight, has risen behind the raptor in a burst of motion. Their formation, scattered yet strangely ordered, mimics the shape of branches and foliage, creating the illusion that the falcon is perched not in a tree, but in a tree conjured from wings.

    The moment is layered with tension and artistry. The falcon, a master hunter, remains still—its power held in reserve. The shorebirds’ pattern form a living backdrop of movement and instinct. Sand stretches beneath them, the ocean hums beyond, and the air is charged with the choreography of survival. In this fleeting tableau, predator and prey share a frame, shaped by fear, hunger, and the geometry of flight.

Cliff’s Architect

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

  • A belted kingfisher ascends toward its nest—a narrow tunnel carved high into the face of a sheer bluff. With a fish clutched in its beak, it rises against a backdrop of raw earth, sand, and clay. There is no perch, no branch to land on—only vertical cliff-face and open air. The bird must hover, stall, and fly in with precision, a feat that speaks to its mastery of motion. As it nears the entrance, its shadow stretches across the bluff, a fleeting silhouette etched in sunlight—wings outstretched, tail flared, a moment suspended between effort and elegance.

    The bluff is a living structure—sculpted by wind, rain, and rising tides, exposing layers of glacial sediment laid down thousands of years ago. Kingfishers dig their homes with remarkable specificity. They are fiercely territorial, selecting sites that offer both seclusion and proximity to water. With beaks and feet, they excavate their burrows by flinging soil backward in a flurry of motion. In this raw, ephemeral landscape, the kingfisher carves the promise of a new generation.

$24,192

Prism Flight

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

$24,192

  • A solitary sandpiper moves through the saturated edges of a bog. Amid golden blooms and the first blush of autumn leaves, it searches—patient, precise—for a meal drawn from the wetland’s hidden bounty. With each careful stride, it probes the soft terrain, gleaning insects and invertebrates from the shallow waters and damp soil. The bird’s slender frame and mottled plumage blend seamlessly into the preserve’s layered palette, a living thread in the wetland’s seasonal mosaic.

    In early autumn, the bog is alive with color. Beyond the yellow wildflowers, the trees begin their slow transformation—leaves tinged with amber and rust drift toward the water, signaling the shift in season. The sandpiper moves through this scene with solitary determination, its presence a reminder of migration’s rhythm and the resilience of small travelers. It is part of the bog’s living story—one thread in a tapestry woven from water, root, and wing.

$24,192

The Tease

Oil on Canvas | 14” x 18”

  • A cluster of bank swallows crowd the rim of a nest hole, heads jutting from the earthen wall, beaks wide with expectation. Their voices rise in a chorus of hunger as a shadow approaches—wings beating against the cliff’s warm face. But it is not a parent. The visitor is an older fledgling from a neighboring nest, already airborne, already free. It hovers briefly, almost playfully, before darting away, leaving the younger birds to their longing.

    The bluff is a mosaic of openings—each one a cradle carved into glacial sediment left behind thousands of years ago. In this vertical nursery, life unfolds unevenly. Some hatch earlier, some fly sooner, and each day brings new lessons in survival. The cliff offers no comfort, only challenge: no branches, no shelter, just wind, sun, and the steep geometry of instinct. Yet from these fragile hollows, wings will emerge. And in the rhythm of flight and waiting, the swallows write their first verses in the story of migration.