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99-006 "Surf's Up - Or, Robert's Tsunami"
1999, Acrylic on Illustration Board

Tsunamis are not graceful, orderly waves like those surfers employ. These gigantic sea surges are terrifying walls of water that often seem to come from nowhere, generated by earthquakes hundreds or thousands of miles away. Here, a fishing village is overwhelmed by a fifty-footer, hurling boats on its crest and promising obliteration to anything in its path. One of the boats still at its dock, by the way, may seem familiar: it is the Orca, the doomed ship which took Quint, Brody, and Hooper on a quest to kill the shark in the movie "Jaws". Another inside joke is the man running from certain doom. His baseball cap bears the name of a feature film I worked on which was sadly a financial disaster!

Chris Butler