At Sea

At Sea (1979), com- posed of 115 enameled steel plates overlaid with two oval canvases, is typically monumental in scale. Making reference to Gustave Courbet’s wave paintings of the late 1860s and early 1870s and the sequential works of Claude Monet (stacks of grain, water lilies, Charing Cross bridge, and so on), the painting was succeeded by Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean (both 1984) and, in the following
year, by Sea Wall, which combined a huge triptych with more than a dozen sculptures on the floor in front of it. These three-dimensional objects, ranging from pastel-colored wooden boats to a pebble-encrusted chair in the shape of a seahorse, replicated the aquatic imagery of the painting.