Please Release Me depicts a sailfish suspended beneath the ocean’s surface, its powerful form dissolving into liquid light. A meditation on entanglement and impermanence, the piece captures the blurred threshold between control and surrender. Influenced by both marine life and metaphysical inquiry, the painting merges realism with abstraction, evoking the quantum instability of existence. Brushstrokes fracture reality; the sail unravels into waveforms—form giving way to vibration, presence dissolving into possibility.
The original is 40x72” acrylic on canvas, painted from a reference photo by Greg Salsberg. Giclée prints are available in proportionally scaled sizes using drop down menu, and are gallery wrapped.
What I was thinking when I was painting:
What happens when form begins to dissolve? In my newest painting, Please Release Me, I tried to answer that question—not just visually, but emotionally and conceptually. This piece is about tension, surrender, light, and everything beneath the surface.
I painted Please Release Me from a reference photo (thank you,Greg Salsberg via Gerry Upthegrove) of a sailfish brought up alongside a boat—its body still in the water, except for the tip of its tail breaking the surface. It had fought hard. And though it may have been released, billfish often don’t survive the fight; the cost of that struggle can be fatal. That tension—between survival and surrender—became the undercurrent of this painting.
The ocean here isn’t just a setting; it’s a collaborator. Light refracts and shatters. Water distorts and dissolves. The sail disintegrates into vibration, breaking apart into gesture, energy, motion. It’s not simply a sailfish—it’s a question: what happens when form begins to dissolve?
Quantum theory was in the back of my mind throughout. The way matter is mostly space. The way particles are only probabilities. That thinking leaked into the brushwork: boundaries blur, water and body intermingle, the solidity of the fish comes undone. The more I painted, the more I felt I was capturing not just a creature, but a moment unraveling—where identity and energy become indistinguishable.
Please Release Me might be a plea from the fish. Or the painter. Or maybe it’s an invitation to the viewer—to loosen your hold on certainty. There’s a strange grace in that letting go.
