Deep Blue 2

Stephen Wessells grew up on the Stanford campus where the Pacific was never far — a presence in the air even when not in view. Decades later, living in the landlocked desert of Las Vegas, water has become something conjured rather than found, summoned from memory and instinct onto canvas. 'Deep Blue 2' is that act of conjuring made permanent: two panels side by side, nearly eight feet tall, imagining what it looks like to stand at the edge of something deep and look across its breathing surface in the dark. He built this painting the way he builds all his work — physically, intuitively, without a net. A scraper dragged broad passages of midnight navy into place. Palette knives pushed cerulean and cobalt into ridges that caught and held the light. A brush softened an edge here, opened a luminous corridor there — that pale, glowing channel running through the left panel like reflected moonlight on a lake you cannot name. The right panel darkens and quiets, the water deepening, the scattered light growing sparse. Together they describe a single moment: the world going still, the surface holding everything and giving nothing away. For Wessells, painting is therapy for modern life — a phrase he means literally. 'Deep Blue 2' carries that intention in every mark. It is the kind of painting you return to after a long day and find it has changed, or perhaps you have. The blue is inexhaustible. The depth is real.