Sheri Paisley | When You Were the Sea

Sheri Paisley | When You Were the Sea
October 4-16, 2025
Main Level Gallery
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 4, 2-4pm
Artist In Attendance


Bau-Xi Vancouver is proud to present When You Were the Sea, BC-based artist Sheri Paisley's new solo exhibition in which she explores the quiet power of the Pacific coast. Based on the remote haven of Ucluelet, BC, these new paintings reflect the ocean not as a subject, but as a presence: something that lives both around and within us. Drawing from the colours and textures of the region - driftwood, kelp, and shifting weather - Paisley captures the emotional undercurrents of memory, connection, and place. These richly layered atmospheric works invite viewers to slow down and consider the true depth of our interconnection with the natural world.


Artist Statement:

Most days on the West Coast, there’s a clear awareness that the ocean isn’t a separate body. Its powerful presence is both external and very much internal - a visceral reminder that the majority of our makeup is water.

When You Were the Sea is a body of work born in the often fog-thick quiet of Ucluelet, BC, where the ocean presses in from all sides and time unspools like the tide. These paintings are not literal seascapes. They are embodied emotional weather maps - impressions of the sea as it moves through ancient cellular memory, inter-relationship, and the recognition of life as interconnected energy.

I paint in layers - thin veils and gestures that accumulate like panes of glass, each holding its own version of the world. The palette is drawn from ocean-soaked driftwood, high-tide kelp, and the shifting clarity of weathered Pacific light: variations of warm and cool blues, quiet rainforest greens, and unassuming greys that hum at the edge of recognition. Each mark is an act of belonging - a way of placing myself in space.

I’m interested in what’s barely there - the space between form and feeling, water and skin, presence and loss. The paintings ask:

What parts of you are shaped by the tide?
What do you still carry that belonged to someone else?
Do we end where the sea begins?
This series offers no answers - only places to return to, like an expansive, outgoing tide after a storm.

– Sheri Paisley 2025


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