🌊 Morning on the Reef
A CruzArtz Fine Arts Feature
Original Watercolor | North Shore, Kauaʻi
Where the Light Touches the Deep
Morning on the Reef
Every morning I snorkeled the reefs off the north shore of Kauaʻi, I found a different kind of silence—one that pulsed with life. This painting, Morning on the Reef, is my tribute to that living silence: a school of reef fish suspended in time, sunbeams pouring down from the surface, the entire ocean holding its breath.
“Morning on the Reef” is the centerpiece of a five-part collection I created after spending three weeks immersed—literally—in the coral reefs of Kauaʻi. Each morning, I’d slip into the water with my snorkel and iPhone, chasing light and movement, listening to the sea speak in rhythm and color. I painted this piece to capture one perfect moment: shafts of morning sunlight cutting through the blue above, igniting the silvery scales and soft yellows of dozens of reef fish drifting just above the coral. These aren’t abstract fish—they’re wrasses, tangs, butterflyfish, and sergeant majors I encountered in real time, schooling and scattering like brushstrokes. They’re memory and muscle, pigment and pulse. I painted them in watercolor to let the ocean speak through the medium: wet-on-wet washes to blur and suggest, layered glazes for depth and shimmer, crisp ink to define the curve of a tail or the glint of an eye. This is how I remember that reef—alive, dreamlike, layered in light.