Where Earth Meets Sea: New Work by Pete Hocking is at AMZehnder Gallery in Wellfleet MA from May 21st – June 4th 2025.

I recently took a friend to see the Atlantic atop the high moraine at White Crest Beach in Wellfleet. He’s from inland, and through his awe I was able to see anew the grandeur of our coastline. It’s not that I take this landscape for granted — just the opposite — but there’s a way we lose sight of what we experience everyday. These paintings are intended to be a reminder of what’s vast and awesome about Cape Cod — a way to renew our appreciation and awe. 

These are summer pictures. They start minutes before sunrise and take us to deep sunset. They’re concerned with what’s magic about the intersection of land and sea. When the ocean isn’t particularly evident in a picture it’s carried by the quality of the light — which of course evokes the sky (even when the sky is largely absent). Looking at the collection comprehensively, it’s possible to imagine a long walk across the Outer Cape over the course of a day — or more likely several days. I hope each picture provides a sense of immersion in a moment at a place that’s special — even sacred. 

While these paintings refer to specific places, they’re very often filtered through decades of memory. Cape Cod, more than most places, shifts and reshapes itself with every season. And yet there’s always a through line — that thing that allows it to be recognizable over stretches of time. More than depicting particular places with absolute fidelity, I want my paintings to reflect that essence, what we carry in memory. A thing we might even call love.