Sand and Sea

You take a moment in time
capture it;
then watch and wait
and see the scene around you
transform from sea to sand
and back again.

The light changes,
shafts of sunlight fall on rocks,
famous for a moment.

The horizon fades
until it's impossible to see
where the sea ends and the sky begins.

Then you seek
to put all of that into paint;
that movement
and that stillness.

I have posted here some paintings of Old Grimsby Bay on Tresco, one of the Scilly Isles. As with almost everywhere else I have painted I have run along the beach, swum in the sea, dug huge holes in the sand and watched the rush of the tide suddenly filling them with water. And there was one amazing picnic of wine and cheese and fruit and chocolate [very good chocolate] as the sun set and the heat faded. It was one of those [all too often] moments when I, wearing only shorts and T shirt, was revelling in the glory of the sunset and Jane was just shivering in the cold despite her multiple layers!




After Alnmouth any painting or sculpture in any church or chapel in the world, will seem almost mundane. You look down through the east window to the shifting sands of the estuary of the river Aln. It's not the safest of places, quite apart from the days when you couldn't move for the Jellyfish the tides came in fast, seriously fast, although not as fast at those at Traeth Mawr. I have walked below Portmerion and not had time to take off my walking boots, or put on my wellies [depending on need] before the water caught up with me. At low tide you can cross the river, but it's all too easy to get swept out, rather like Bossington [a shingle ridge rather than an estuary] where you can swim but need to swim continually west to avoid being swept east onto the rocks Hurlstone point. [H+S advice: don't swim in any of the places I do!] Yet Alnmouth is different from so many other estuaries, and the view out to Coquet Island is one that I have painted again and again and can still see.