Drawings by artist Regina Dalkalacheva go on show today at the Nesi gallery in Burgas, in an exhibition called "Quiet Bays". It runs until 30 November.

The works are a visual diary of her impressions of the US West Coast and her first encounter with the Pacific Ocean. They centre on the bays of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Carmel and San Diego.

She began with pencil drawings, which she then reworked and developed digitally. The result is graphic, colour pictures of different stretches of water, and the separate pieces come together as one image.

The works are laid out as a graphic installation that looks like a comic strip of separate panels. Each panel is a frozen frame from a different moment in the life of the ocean, which is always changing. The show also has art books in a limited print run, with an unusual spatial form and materials.

Dalkalacheva told BNR Burgas that she first stood before the ocean on the coast of Southern California, and it made a very strong impression on her. She had already seen the Mediterranean and her beloved Black Sea, as she spends every summer in Burgas, but the ocean affected her in a completely different way.

"The scale is different, the sound is different, the colour is different, and the picture is of something extremely powerful, vast and boundless, something that commands respect," the artist said.

"It would not be an exaggeration to say that I count it among the strongest emotional experiences of my life," she added.

The official presentation is today from 5pm to 7pm. The gallery is at 12 Aleksandrovska Street.