a note from the artist

The surface was smooth and calm as a worked pane of glass. Not even a ripple marred the surface of the canal. For a moment, I thought I could skip a rock across the surface and it would just slide the width of the canal and far beyond, out of sight. Forever.

A solitary rusted swim dock floats weightlessly in an endless sea of soft blue. There is no shore in sight. No sky, no horizon. Just mist and mirror. The water is impossibly still—so much so that the reflection of the platform and its ladder feel more present than the object itself. The fog has erased distance, depth, and time.

The scene holds that feeling of waking up early and not knowing what day it is. It’s dreamlike, but not in the whimsical sense. It’s suspended, silent, surreal. The composition is minimalist, yet the emotion is full. The overwhelming blue suggests peace—but also surrender. Or drift. The kind that happens when you stop paddling.

It was one of those moments that make you inhale slowly—then sit in the space after.

About this photograph

Captured on a fog-laden morning along Washington’s Hood Canal, Adrift is a meditation on presence, stillness, and the kind of solitude that doesn’t ache—but soothes.

In this composition, a rusted swim dock floats untethered, seemingly suspended in a sea of calm. There’s no visible shore. No horizon. Just blue upon blue, and the quiet breath of fog softening everything into silence. The world dissolves at the edges, leaving only the subject—and the viewer—adrift in something vast and weightless.

This piece speaks to a rare emotional moment: when isolation becomes peace. When time and space lose urgency. When the world steps back and gives you room to simply be.

It is one of the most direct expressions of my aesthetic I call Comfortable Isolation—a place where quiet becomes a mirror, and stillness becomes sanctuary.