Stillness in Motion: What the Tide Remembers

Stillness in Motion: What the Tide Remembers 

Acrylic on Canvas
From the collection: Transitions in Time – A Twilight Journey in Ningo 

This painting holds more than a view—it holds a crossing. 

Set where land meets water in the coastal town of Ningo, Stillness in Motion captures the quiet power of a bridge that links not just two places, but two worlds: Old Ningo and New Ningo. Cars and boats move through the scene, echoing the rhythm of life in a coastal community—where movement is livelihood, and the tide both takes and returns. 

This was the place where I began healing—where I first embraced painting as refuge while living with Borderline Personality traits, and where I found meaning in mentoring young girls as a public health educator. The bridge pictured isn’t just symbolic; in local tradition, it’s sacred. The living may cross it, but the dead cannot. Funeral hearses stop before it, out of reverence for ancestral beliefs that spirits of the sea forbid their passage. 

I may not believe the tale, but I do believe in what it implies: this place, this view, this moment—it’s for the living. For those still becoming. 

In the swirl of cool waves, jagged brushwork, and vibrant skies, this piece becomes a meditation on life in motion. A reminder that in places where stories run deep, even the simplest crossings carry meaning.