Salt Pans: Mapping Light and Memory

A glimpse into my salt pan series and how these quiet, geometric landscapes became a way to paint light, memory, and distance.

This new series began with a simple image: a salt pan seen from above, divided into soft rectangles of color. At first, it was the geometry that drew me in – the grids, the lines, the way each pool held a slightly different shade. But the more I looked, the more I felt something deeper: a calm, almost meditative stillness.

In the studio, I begin each salt pan painting by building up texture and letting it dry. This groundwork becomes the skin of the piece – uneven, tactile, full of small variations before a single color goes down.

Once that surface has dried, I apply color and line. I block in the main shapes first, letting the edges stay loose and imperfect, then add lines, scrape them back, and redraw them. Some areas become sharp and defined, while others stay hazy and blurred. This push and pull between clarity and softness is important to me. It mirrors the way we remember places – some details stay sharp, others fade into atmosphere.

From there, I return to the surface again, adding further layers of texture and color. I often work in unexpected tones underneath – deep greens or inky blues – so that when I later scratch or sand the surface, those hidden colors quietly appear. At certain points I also work in gold leaf and diamond dust, letting them catch the light within the layers so the surface shifts subtly depending on how it's viewed. Each pass of texture, color, and these finer materials builds on the last, so the painting develops in stages rather than all at once.

Salt Pan II - Mixed media (acrylic, gold leaf, texture paste, diamond dust, inks) on canvas board

Color is at the heart of this series. I'm especially drawn to pale pinks, chalky whites, soft blues, and muted ochres. These tones feel both natural and slightly unreal, like a landscape seen at dawn or just after sunset.

People sometimes ask if these paintings are maps, landscapes, or something more abstract. For me, they are all three. They are maps of light, traces of water, and emotional landscapes at the same time. The salt pans become a way to talk about distance, solitude, and the beauty of repetition.

My hope is that when you look at these works, you feel a sense of stillness – as if you're hovering above a place that is both familiar and unknown. If a painting invites you to pause, to breathe a little more slowly, and to wander through its small rectangles of color, then it has done what I hoped.

Thank you for spending time with this series. If you'd like to see more of the salt pan works or ask about a specific piece, you can explore my portfolio on the site or reach out to me directly. I'd love to hear what these quiet, geometric landscapes bring up for you.