Steve Jensen, Sapphire Bay, 2026, oil on vintage nautical chart, mounted to recycled aluminum, 20.5 x 20.5 x 1 in

Steve Jensen uses the image of the boat as a symbol of passage-voyage, transition, and the journey into the unknown. Rooted in a family history of Norwegian fishermen and boat builders, the motif carries both personal inheritance and cultural memory. Jensen reflects on how this lineage contrasts with contemporary realities, noting that it now feels easier to make a living as an artist than as a fisherman, a shift he reads as a troubling sign of environmental decline in marine ecosystems.

His work is also deeply shaped by personal loss. After the deaths of his parents and his longtime partner, Jensen created boats to carry their ashes to sea in acts resembling contemporary Viking funerals. These gestures transform mourning into ritual, linking grief to water, passage, and release. His father's suicide, his mother's illness, and his partner's death from alcoholism inform the emotional weight behind these works.

Through sculpture and ritual action, Jensen seeks to transmute profound personal tragedy into forms of beauty and remembrance, using the boat as both vessel and metaphor for continuity, loss, and transformation.