What washes up must come back

The tangible artifacts of human and nature interactions.

Mystery Liquid, 40 x 40 inches, Oil on Canvas, Lisa Kellner.

Other than working in my studio, being in nature is what keeps me grounded - free - empowered. My breaks from painting are my time to get outside and see the world as it is.

Often, I walk to the shore to see the moments happening in real time. It always amazes me how I can know the land so well and yet be surprised by all that has changed from one minute to the next.

Since living here on our little piece of ledge nestled next to the sea, I have watched many objects find their way to shore. From broken docks to lobsterman pants to buckets and bottles and tiny little bits. The buckets are washed and reused in the garden. The large fish storage tanks that wash up become rain catchers for watering my vegetables.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the lobsterman pants!

Daily, I go on a mission to pick up this refuse that has found it’s way here.

I started to notice the beauty in these forgotten and discarded items. How the ocean and prior use has turned them into interesting objects shaped by history and tinged by wear.

I collect the most compelling ones, piling them up in my studio to be used for paintings in either the Crevace or History of the Mundane series. I feel a connection to them, these artifacts delivered to me from people I’ve never met, delivered by an ocean faster than an Amazon box!

The landscape has changed as these objects imbed themselves into the moss and sand and seaweed, creating a tightly woven fabric of soil and debris merged together.

Mystery Liquid, Installation view with the actual “mystery liquid”, Lisa Kellner.

At first, I was pissed.

How can people just drop this stuff in the ocean?

I remember that when I lived in New York and would run on the beach in Long Beach that I would see white refuse washing up all along the shore. I was told that airplanes were allowed to dump into the sea if they were a certain distance from shore.

But things you don’t want always wash back to where you are. That’s just a basic law of nature.

Whatever you discard will come back to you.

So I continue to make paintings and installations from the waste I now discover. My paintings are indicators of the moments we find ourselves in. If the landscape has changed, then so must my work.

Learn more about the Crevace series.