Neptune 3

Deep blues fold into warm brown haze in this 2010 painting by Catherine de Potter. The scene sits somewhere between ocean and atmosphere, with no firm line to separate sea from sky. Pigment drifts in soft clouds across the surface, and scattered specks of light glimmer through the darker patches, reading almost like faraway stars or a spray of salt water. Near the bottom edge, a dark form rises out of the murk, suggesting something solid lurking within all that mist.

Named for Neptune, the Roman god of the sea, the work carries the god's stormy, restless mood without ever showing a face or a fixed place. De Potter turns instead to pure color and texture, trusting them to hold the feeling. The image shifts the longer you stay with it, shapes surfacing and dissolving as your eye wanders. You might see a tempest breaking, a plunge into deep water, or nothing more than light wrestling with shadow. The painting happily leaves that reading up to you.