The Path Forward Painting

I live near the ocean, and surf. This painting is part of a series and hangs well with 'the curiosity to go into the unknown', and 'the deep'. What courage does it take to step off dry land onto the sea in a ship that may be thrown around by the waves, directed only by a knowledge of the stars and sun and the ability to read them, when the nearest land is two miles away, straight down. What was it that drove them further out into the unknown, to spend their days poised between a great un-limitless sky, and the un-knowable blue depths that contained their nightmares, or over which they sped to their dreams over the places that ancient maps populated with beasts, dragons, and chimera. Even now that technology offers us a look, a views, a silent glimpse of what lies beneath, is not the truth more wonderful and yet more terrifying than we had ever imagined? The places in the deep ocean where no light goes and fish and sea creatures are transparent, with pulsing coloured lights. But we still know about the surface of the moon than we do about our deepest oceans. And what yearning curiosity led man to venture forth when the common belief was that the world was flat? How much trust must one have in ones crew or captain to put oneself into their hands for better or worse? To go North, South, East, West, to anywhere where one is not from, to find cargo that is needed elsewhere, and to brave such storms ice and often to sweat and swelter in the heat while the seas laid glassy smooth around one, watching the storm gather on the horizon. To watch the clouds appear, transform, disappear, promise rain, disappoint or encourage in an endless shift and restless change of mind, or steadfast determination to make the ships' journey not so smooth. The wave that reaches up above us towering about us, with the ability to crush and pull us down and hold us under... These are what the ship has learnt to ride , and in doing so created our history, our journeys and migrations, our trade and communications as even our internet, travels under the sea, laid out unreeled from the back of a ship to lie on the ocean floor. The cardinal direction, the True North, the astrolabe, the magnetized needle that took the ships, clinker built, square rigged, through the winds, tropical cyclones, thunderstorms & lightning, squalls, winds, sea fog and waterspouts, the gales off Shetland or swells and monsoon rain in the South China sea... the fevers, the strangeness, the darkness and dangers. Facing these gave us trade routes, and immigration in amongst the pirates, battles and war. Unpredictable , limitless, the place where seafarers have risked their lives, the primal forces of tide and wave a danger to all; it is the sea that reminds us that we are just humans, fragile and vulnerable. humankind at the mercy of the ocean, but now we are the dangerous ones; and the sea is becoming our victim....