CHAPTER IV

Blue Me Away

Bali · Indonesia · Australia
2017 – 2022

Some shades of blue stay with you long after the moment has passed.

They appear on distant islands, where the ocean meets the sky, in waves that never break the same way twice, and in memories that quietly refuse to fade.

Without noticing, I began following that colour.

Across countries. Across coastlines. Across canvases.

What started as a fleeting impression slowly became a language of its own.

Every painting was another attempt to hold onto something that could never truly be held.

Maybe that is why blue never felt like just a colour. It felt like a way of seeing.

Mature abstract wave painting in deep blue and turquoise — visual anchor of the Blue Me Away series

BALI · 5:00 AM · OIL PASTEL · SUN-FADED TURQUOISE · EYES → COLOUR → WAVE · INDONESIA → AUSTRALIA

HOW THE FIRST WAVE APPEARED

I thought I was trying to draw a colour. It curved into a wave before I understood what was happening.

I woke before sunrise.

Maybe it was jet lag. Or maybe it was simply an old habit — the kind you carry across oceans without knowing why.

My dog was only a year old then. He liked spending the night outside and treated sunrise like the end of his shift. Around dawn, he would ask to come home and immediately go to sleep.

I stayed awake.

There was a sheet of paper nearby and a box of oil pastels. A Claes Rosen remix of Marvin Gaye's "If This World Were Mine" was playing in my head since the day we met.

I wanted to capture a colour I could not forget.

Sun-faded turquoise. The eyes of someone who had spent years looking beyond the horizon and knew how to read water.

I was not trying to paint the ocean. I was trying to paint that particular blue.

The shape curved, gathered movement and turned into a barrel before I realised I was drawing a wave.

That morning became the beginning of Blue Me Away.

First pastel wave sketch on paper, surrounded by oil pastels and drawing materials — ORIGIN ARTIFACT 01 5:00 AM. Oil pastels, a sleepless morning, and the first shape of Blue Me Away.

Warm ambient light on a music player — the soundtrack playing when the first wave appeared — ORIGIN ARTIFACT 02 The soundtrack playing when the first wave appeared.
Marvin Gaye — If This World Were Mine
Claes Rosen Remix

Artwork 01 — First conceptual wave painting in oil on canvas, the origin of the Blue Me Away series

The Sea I Have Yet to Meet

Acrylic on canvas

2017

I had never seen this water
Somehow, I already missed it

Artwork 02 — Deep blue abstract ocean wave in mixed media

BLUE ME AWAY

2016

The wave was no longer in front of me. It had entered the way I saw

By then, blue was no longer a color I was trying to reproduce. It had become a state I kept returning to: depth, force, danger, release.
In this painting, the wave is not observed from the shore. It folds inward and pulls the eye towards its centre, until water stops behaving like landscape and becomes a state of mind.
I wanted to capture the instant when fear and attraction become impossible to separate - when the thing that might overwhelm you is also the thing you cannot stop moving towards.
That tension became the heart of Blue Me Away

Artwork 03 — Turquoise abstract ocean composition in mixed media

SCAR REEF

2019

Sumbawa was never soft. Its beauty came with consequence.

This work grew out of Sumbawa - not the postcard version, but its harsher edge, where deep blue water, exposed reef and sun-burnt land exist within the same frame.
The reef is both foundation and threat: the hidden structure that gives the wave its form, and the sharp edge beneath its beauty. The gold is not decoration. It carries the heat of the island - danger and attraction compressed into the same glow.
I was drawn to a landscape that made no attempt to appear harmless.
Scar Reef is Sumbawa as Iremember it: raw, magnetic, and entirely uninteresed in being gentle.

Narrow tropical path leading toward a surf break in Bali, Indonesia — Bali, Indonesia

Indonesian coastline with a distant wave breaking on the horizon — Sumbawa, Indonesia

Fishing boat on calm ocean waters at dawn, Indonesia — Flores, Indonesia

Indonesia never felt like one place to me.
Bali was the first door - incense, wet stone, tangled green and the suden understanding that life could be seen differently. Flores felt like a lost world: dark water, moonsoon green and boats leaving before dawn. Sumbawa was rougher - long roads, empty coastlines, villages, rain-soaked hills and the feeling that comfort had been left several islands behind.
I keep returning because no island ever explained the next one.

Artwork 04 — Large-scale abstract teal wave, immersive full-width composition

IN THE SEA OF PEOPLE MY EYES WILL ALWAYS LOOK FOR YOU

2018

I painted the gaze, not the face. The ocean did the rest

This was never meant to be a portrait. I was trying to preserve a gaze — sun-faded turquoise, shaped by years of looking beyond the horizon and learning to read water. The eyes remain above the surface while the rest of the figure dissolves into foam, gold and movement.
Memory rarely keeps a person intact.
It saves fragments: a colour, a gesture, the way someone once looked at the distance.
In this work, the wave became both concealment and recognition. The face disappears, but the eyes continue searching.
Some people leave your life and remain inside the way you see.

INTERLUDE

Rage

Nangandoro

Mixed medias

2019

Not every wave came from wonder. Some came from hope breaking apart faster than the heart could understand. The colours stopped asking for permission.

I had mistaken intensity for certainty.
What felt like a future could collapse within minutes, leaving the body to absorb what the mind had not yet understood.
I remember going underwater and holding my breath for as long as I could — not to disappear, but to find one moment of silence inside the noise.
Grief followed me into ordinary places: the beach, a massage table, a fitting room. It arrived without dignity, timing or permission.
Nangandoro came from that pressure. Blue began to fracture. Red entered the work. Gold no longer felt luminous; it looked like something beautiful already starting to burn.
This painting is not simply about anger. It is about the moment desire becomes too powerful to remain beautiful

Expansive Australian outback horizon at golden hour, sparse landscape — Bali, Indonesia

Coastal rocks meeting the ocean horizon in Western Australia, minimal composition — Western Australia

Artwork 06 — Final and most mature wave painting, the visual culmination of Blue Me Away

STILL BLUE

oil, canvas

2021

The wave passed.The blue remainded.

By the time I painted this, the wave no longer needed to announce itself.
It could flatten, repeat and return — horizon, swell, foam, reef, then water again. The circular format removes any clear beginning or end, turning the ocean into a continuous rhythm rather than a single dramatic event.
After years of chasing intensity, I became more interested in what remains after it.
The sea keeps moving. The colour stays.

Some eyes do not reflect the sea.
They remember it.

Blue Me Away is a record of what happened when one colour became a direction — and then refused to disappear.

NEXT CHAPTER

Gold Dust

What remains after the light has gone