Plunging off the back of the ship, I was now immediately immersed in a mesmeric undersea landscape. Each day three places would be chosen and this was the last dive of the last day before the monsoons closed in. The currents were increasing and so held the vibrant corals in a pulsating sway that quickly attuned to my breathing rhythm. To maintain position became trickier as increasing manoeuvring was essential to offset the diminishing placidity of the earlier dives. The garden just beneath me changed pigments as instantaneous as the sub-tropical light above shifted in and out of shade. The irregular tide now pushed me alongside a hitherto unseen companion. Our expressions matched in wonder and contortion around our enabling apparatus, seeming to negate the norms of conventional introduction. As the reef dropped sharply away into the ocean we instinctively turned simultaneously to retrace our flight. We gestured toward elaborately adorned creatures, more so to validate from another what our eyes were experiencing for the first time. In our intoxicated affair we had drifted far from the ship, all too audibly alerting us to return. On the surface we were free to conventionally converse, but her mindset and my own matched in silent reflective absolution. We stretched our bodies to meet the waves and swam as one toward our vessel at anchor. Somewhere at the cusp of the Ribbon Reefs I had inherited an offshore rapport I felt compelled to commemorate.
- Media: mixed media resin
- Dimensions: 132 x 74 x 4cm
- Price: £5200.00
Other images of Offshore Rapport by Stephen Farley