Ran Ortner’s work consists of paintings of the ocean on canvases that are as much as eight feet tall and thirty-two feet wide. They show no land, sky, boats, figures, or other reference points, merely what Herman Melville calls “this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.” Viewers commonly experience strong emotions standing before his canvases. Some feel as though the paintings are not about the oceans at all, but are instead tapestries of our human condition.