Yesterday I was thinking back to where my current seashore paintings have evolved from. Of course, this beautiful North Yorkshire coast can only inspire…

I think of myself as facing North, twix land and sea.

On my back is the warm sunshine of yesteryears. Robin Hood’s Bay is my South, where so long ago I fell in love with that village and a beautiful man, though my roots originate much further South.

On my left are those awesome moors, clad in purple cloaks in Summer and a white mantle in Winter. There, is glory. And there, sweet sorrow buried on a hillside.

And on my right, the ebb and flow of the North Sea. Its gentle waves and fearful tempests, its constantly changing light, the chiming sound of waves over a shingle beach, those deep and rhythmic blues, the feel of soft sand, and those big skies…

I always go back to the sea… And today three beautiful women came to my studio. One, whom I hadn’t seen for about 40 years, bought “Mermaid”. Painted in 2012, soon after I moved back to the coast, it is very different from my current work. One, whom I didn’t know, bought “Runswick Bay”, unusually for me depicting the sea in winter. One, a close friend, had fallen in love with “Robin Hood’s Bay Rainbow” when I first showed it on Facebook. All three paintings are very different in approach, mood and scale, but I take it as a good omen for my current attraction/obsession/compulsion/fascination for the seashore, which I think many share.

Mermaid. Gouache on watercolour paper. 19x26cm. 2012. Sold.
Runswisck Bay. 20x20cm. oils on linen. 2018. Sold.
2019. Sold.