Prussia Cove cliffs

Prussia Cove Cliffs, oil on linen canvas, 46 x 55 cm

Prussia Cove is a secluded part of the south Cornish coast, with a turbulent history of wrecking and smuggling. Now, however, it is known for its natural beauty and an International Music Seminar. When the tide is in, the beach is all rocks, pebbles and rock pools. Here I have focussed on the cliffs, which had some reddish vegetation clinging to them. I don't know what it was, but I do like the extra colour, which drew my attention away from the sea back towards the land.

Prussia Cove Cliffs
oil on linen canvas, 46 x 55 cm

£360

Porth Moina

Porth Moina, oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm

Porth Moina is in Penwith, Cornwall, on the north coast (and on the southwest coast path) . Porth means "cove" and Moina probably means "mines" in this context.

Purbeck Eddies

Purbeck Eddies, oil on canvas, 40 x 50 cm

I started this in the last few days of Open Studios, working from a 2014 photograph taken off the beach at Winspit in the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset. I finished it today, having taken a few days off.

Kimmeridge

Kimmeridge Bay in Purbeck, Dorset is all about the rocks. It lies on the Jurrassic Coast and is a favoured destination for fossil-hunters as well as rock-pool afficianados and snorkellers. It has clear, calm water and a folly on the headland - Clavell Tower, which in 2006-8 was moved away from the crumbling cliff. 

So, of course, my painting is all about the rocks. The flat rocks in the centre dominate the image. I spent most of my time on their colours, curves and cracks, their attendant pools and the wet reflections of the summer sun, but it was the seaweed that worried me most. It was a curious colour - a bright mix of yellow, green, red and orange - and it was underwater, right in the foreground. How could I indicate that with my knife, a blunt painting instrument if ever there was one? In the end, it was all a matter of observation and approximation, as is often the case, and allowing the viewer's visual cortex to fill in the gaps.

Kimmeridge 

Oil on linen canvas, 50 x 70 cm

£400

Solo exhibition: SEA in Fareham

Atlantic Surf

A winter seascape, waves crashing on the Cornish coast, colours that were there all along brought to the fore...

Oil on box canvas, 30 x 80 cm

£220

Across the Beach

This is a composite of several photographs taken on Portreath beach in December 2012, and painted largely during the last day or two of my Hampshire Open Studio run this year. I mentally enhanced the colours between photographic reference and painted picture, and deliberately left a few areas of natural-coloured linen canvas unpainted.

Across the Beach, oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm

£575
exclusive of post and packaging

Praa Sands / The Prettiest Wave

The weather has been hot enough of late that the layers of this painting were pretty much dry after a day or two. I've been working on this in very short sessions, in between doing other, largely less interesting things and rediscovering Life Without the Internet (not by choice).

Oil on canvas, 40 x 80 cm

Botallack Count Houses and Newbury Lock

Botallack Count Houses

Two more - rather watery in theme - line and washes. Both were done from photographs using dip pens, acylic inks (sepia and white) and watercolour.

To the Lighthouse - SOLD

The light that day was phenomonal. Sharp against a gloomily dramatic sky, Godrevy Light presided over St. Ives Bay and the crashing waves, and I knew there was a splendid Godrevyscape for the taking. This large canvas was painted from a photograph taken from the clifftop at Easter.

Oil on canvas, 100 x 73 cm

SOLD

Down the Line: the West Pier

Brighton's West Pier is in a sorry state. There was a lot more of it there (although it was not accessible) in 1989, when I moved to Hove (and then Brighton), but it has been falling into the sea, hit by storms and arson, and I understand that there is nothing that can reasonably be done to save it.

Nonetheless, the skeletal remains are elegant and distinctive. Apparently it is the "most photographed building in Brighton". I took many photographs of it, myself, when I revisited Brighton and Hove on Wednesday with my children. This line and wash is from one of those photographs.

Line and Wash on The Langton watercolour paper, cropped from A3

Acrylic Inks - Sepia and White
Watercolour Palette - Phthalo blue, Cerulean Blue, Permanent Rose, Quinacridone Gold, Winsor Violet

On the Rocks

Are the waves wilder because of the rocks? Loosely based on a photograph take in Portreath, Corwall.

Oil on canvas, 30 x 100 cm

Fisher and Warrior - SOLD

This is a painting based on a sketch (and supporting photographs). It's of a charmingly scruffy fishing boat in Portsmouth Harbour, with a Historic Ship (HMS Warrior) in the background.

Inexorable

I find the sea - at its interface with the land - quite fascinating. Wild, untameable. inexorable and essentially, hypnotically repetitive.

A different palette here, in a nod to the natural linen support: two blues and three earth colours. And white. Utramarine was, of course, used in the sky along with burnt umber (and titanium white); the sea has a little of those colours, but phthalo blue - with burnt sienna and yellow ochre (not forgetting titanium white) dominates.

Oil on linen canvas, 30 x 30 cm

Portsmouth

Today was spent in Portsmouth; with the two paintings duly delivered to the Guildhall (see them in the basement from the 28th January), we couldn't resist wandering down to the seafront to sketch...

Linear

This is the finished version of the painting I was working on over the weekend (between visitors).

Based on a photograph taken on Porthtowan beach this August. A sort of companion piece to Curve.


Oil on natural linen canvas
38 x 61 cm

Tintagel Cove

I had a brief opportunity to visit Tintagel this August. It was packed full of people. I gave the castle (nice though it is) a miss and went down to the cove, where I made a sketch and took lots of photographs.

Curve - SOLD

The starting point for this was a photograph taken from the beach at Porthtowan when I was there to look at the view from East Cliff.

View from Rock - Commission - SOLD

Rock is a village in North Cornwall, just across the Camel estuary from Padstow.  I was asked to paint a view across the estuary, so we detoured that way at Easter and were fortunate enough to find Rock basking in wonderful sunshine.

Windsurf - SOLD

When we were in Cornwall over the New Year, I visited Gwithian (from which Godrevy Light can be seen), and took lots and lots of photographs. There was a windsurfer - a very skillful fellow - out on the sea and I managed to get a few shots of him in action.