Ebb & Flow: The Many Faces of Water is artist Heather Stivison’s third New York City solo show. In this series of oil and acrylic paintings, Stivison does not “illustrate” water as in plein air paintings or photographs. Instead, she paints to capture the essence of water—something clear and colorless, with its shape formed entirely by the external forces of objects, land, wind, gravity. Searching for water’s most primary qualities, she uses light, color, form, shape, line, to engender a sense of water. Fluidity, reflections, rhythms are evident in her ocean surface paintings.

Stivison is fascinated by the reflections and patterns created by the coastal ocean surface. She paints variations on patterns, exploring how much she can change them and still maintain the sense that the subject is surface water. In addition to surface water, the exhibition includes larger paintings, some a full five-feet-wide, that explore the sense of weightlessness and mystery that she finds in the imagining unknown ocean depths.

A special feature of this exhibition is an on-demand sound installation of original jazz music composed and performed by scientist Noah Germolus, during his time researching ocean chemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Germolus and Stivison took part in a multi-year collaboration where she interpreted his data in paint. He in turn, interpreted four of her paintings in music.