Ember Tide

Ember Tide is a 16 × 20 inch gouache painting that captures a quiet, intimate moment through color, movement, and expression. A reclining female figure fills the composition, her face turned toward the viewer while waves of deep red, copper, and crimson hair spread around her like fire moving through water.

Warm oranges, reds, and golds flow across the face and hair, while cool turquoise and blue tones surround the figure and create a striking contrast. The result feels suspended between heat and water, stillness and motion, giving the portrait a dreamlike quality that is both personal and slightly surreal.

Her direct gaze becomes the emotional center of the painting. She appears calm but fully present, creating a sense of closeness without revealing exactly what she is thinking. The unusual angle of the figure adds to that feeling, as though the viewer has entered a private moment rather than encountered a traditionally posed portrait.

The title, Ember Tide, reflects the collision of the two dominant visual forces in the piece. Fiery color moves through the figure while the surrounding blues suggest water, air, or open space. Together they evoke transformation, emotion, and the tension between opposing energies existing within the same person.

Painted in gouache, the work uses expressive brushwork, layered color, and sweeping lines to create movement throughout the composition. The flowing hair becomes almost abstract in places, allowing the portrait to move between contemporary figurative painting, emotional expressionism, and subtle magical realism.

Ember Tide is especially suited to collectors drawn to feminine portraiture, expressive figurative art, dramatic color, contemporary surrealism, and original paintings that combine intimacy with a strong visual presence.

• Medium: Gouache
• Size: 16 × 20 inches
• Subject: Reclining female figure / Contemporary portrait
• Themes: Emotion, transformation, femininity, introspection, fire and water, duality, movement, identity, vulnerability
• Style: Contemporary figurative, expressive, atmospheric, surreal, narrative
• Orientation: Portrait