Winston Swift Boyer's color-saturated photos from the edge of the continent at Gallery Sur.

Photographer Winston Swift Boyer has lived, worked and shown locally for so long that his biography begins with gallery names whose names have faded into the past, like the Lakey Gallery in Carmel and the Bruised Reed Gallery in Monterey. Those shows happened in 1979 and 1980, respectively.

Since then he's done photographs of cityscapes and landscapes that are so densely detailed and majestic in breadth you can almost hear the wind blowing in them. He's done faded, nostalgic Americana facades of old signs and murals and small-town architecture. He's done quizzical scenes from Europe.

On Wednesday, Oct. 15, Gallery Sur in Carmel is unveiling a new show of his work called The Ocean Series. It's comprised of vertical prints of stratified color photographs of the horizon over the Pacific Ocean. They were taken from a house atop Garrapata Ridge that he rented from the one of the Westons. (He went to school with Kim Weston.) He lived there for 14 years.

"He always wanted to live there," says gallery owner David Patigian. "He wanted to saturate himself. The purpose was to saturate himself with the Big Sur coast."

During that residency, between the fog cover and the clouds, when he encountered a particularly dramatic horizon, especially at sunset, he took pictures of it.

"A lot of people said, 'Oh, that [photo] looks like Mark Rothko.' An abstract impressionist painter. I never understood or followed them," Boyer says. But when Rothko's name kept coming up, he did some reading and viewing and found deep similarities in their approaches to color and form.

"There was definitely some influence," he says. "Historically, intuitively, serendipitously."

Boyer's solo show—which has an opening reception 4-7pm Saturday, Oct. 18, which Boyer will attend—is made up of 20 vertical photographs printed on canvas from his 14 year residency. Most of the photos in the show were taken in 2013. Bright, clear days are not conducive to the kind of photograph Boyer is trying to capture.

"Because there's not a lot of atmosphere," he says. "In 2013, the atmosphere was just phenomenal. It was going off in 2013, all winter long. Usually about this time of year when you get clouds and storms coming in."

Though the dimensions are vertical, the compositions are made up of swathes of horizontal lines, made by the water line, by clouds and by strata of differently colored atmosphere lit up by the sun. The very air is naturally painted. 

The photographs show the ocean, which also changes color and texture, sometimes delineated sharply from the sky and clouds, sometimes blending seamlessly into a haze, sometimes spotted by massive shadows from overhead clouds. The works fluctuate in tones of warm oranges, brooding blues, shadowy grays and regal purples. They're named after the date on which the photograph was taken: "Ocean 11.21.11 IV" and "Ocean 8.2.13."

"What I think of the series is that it's one of the most compelling collections Gallery Sur has represented in 25 years," Patigian says.

There will be 15 of Boyer's pieces in the front end of the gallery on the walls. They will surround the dense and graceful stone sculptures of the famed Noyanhongo family on the pedestals in the middle of the floor. An elemental pairing.

The Ocean Series is viewable starting this Wednesday, 10:30am-6pm daily, until Oct. 21. The opening reception is 4-7pm Saturday. Gallery Sur is located on Sixth between Dolores and Lincoln, Carmel. 626-2615.