Closer Even

This painting is a memory of a day spent drawing and exploring on a beach in Northumberland, England a couple of decades ago. I’ve tried to conjure the feeling of time running slowly on a mid-summer day when the wind has dropped, the air is warm and the tide is so far out that you can hardly hear the waves breaking on the shore. As often happens on the Northumberland coast on a warm summer day there is a covering of high cloud which lets plenty of light through but softens all the shadows. This thin layer of cloud has a complex structure and has a few holes in it where the sun can get through at full strength. The edges of this hole are always darker than the mass of the cloud. It’s quite unlike a full-sunny day and I think I prefer it. Often at the end of such a day the sky clears, the wind freshens and you get a strong sunset, but here at midday it’s as if time has stopped except for the ship on the horizon creeping slowly south and the thin low line of surf breaking. I believe landscapes can be metaphors for mental states, calm and relaxed in this case. After a while you notice things you didn’t see before such as the corner of a concrete block buried in sand below the dunes. It’s a reminder of a buried past when people feared invasion. This coast feels safe but weather-moods change and so do human atmospheres. I wonder what it felt like on the beaches of Ukraine a decade ago?

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