This piece was a commission for the Crosscurrents: New Music Ensemble 2018 Festival with The Barber Institute of Fine Arts. The piece is a soundscape of of Johan Christian Dahl’s painting ‘Mother and Child by the Sea’, with the musical composition being directly based on the visual scene.

Field recordings have been combined with studio recordings to create an electroacoustic representation of the sounds envisioned in the painting. Sounds evolve from the gentle lapping of the ocean and the repetitive reimagined sound of ship bells to the unsettled sound of the ocean becoming increasingly granular and abstracted, reflecting the ambiguity surrounding the story of the painting and whether the father will arrive back home safely.