I am the sea (fine art print)

This painting was influenced by D. H. Lawrence's poem Mana of the Sea. I was drawn to the way the poem imagines the body and the sea as part of the same force - waves, limbs, movement and power flowing into one another. That physical connection sits behind the painting: not looking at the sea from a safe distance, but feeling yourself inside its rhythm.

Mana of the Sea by D. H. Lawrence

Do you see the sea, breaking itself to bits against

The islands,

Yet remaining unbroken, the level great sea?

Have I caught from it

The tide in my arms

That runs down to the shallows of my wrists, ……And breaks

Abroad in my hands, like the waves among the rocks

Of substance?

Do the rollers of the sea

Roll down my thighs

And over the submerged islets of my knees

With power, sea-power

Sea-power

To break against the ground

In the flat, recurrent breakers of my two feet?

And is my body ocean, ocean

Whose power runs to the shores along my arms

And breaks in the foamy handy, whose power rolls out

To the white-trending waves of two salty feet?

I am the sea, I am the sea!