Children Of The Sea

In Children of the Sea, I tried to capture the warm intimacy that exists between Pacific bottlenose dolphins, as well as the fantastic ocean environment in which they live. The meaning of this painting is very important to me. I feel it truly captures the spirit of our ocean friends. This is one of my early works, and I’d have to say it’s probably my favorite. I sold it in 1983 at the Sawdust Festival in Laguna, then bought it back in 1990 for my own collection. Once I bought the painting back, I dropped everything I was doing and set aside time to sculpt it in bronze. I had always seen the painting in a three-dimensional way, and when I actually began to translate it into sculpture, the impact was tremendous! Now when people ask me how long it took to finish the sculpture, I say it took seven years and five weeks — seven years to think about it and five weeks to physically create the piece. The result was very satisfying, though, and this painting inspired me to begin sculpting many of my earlier works.

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