Five years ago, when I reached this little seaside town where we live now I saw the world around me, but it was as if my mind had retracted in its city life of facts and figures. In that clutter I couldn’t find a place to keep and mull over the dramatic sounds of the wind, the cackling of the seagulls or the pendulum like swishing of the waves. Neither were there corners left to treasure the high cliffs glinting in the sun, rabbits scurrying to their holes or the sail boats that bobbed up and down sharing the water with diamonds that dazzled the eye.
Walking, gazing and talking in hyperbole on other virtues of country life were all fine but could I lay a hand in those rocks and cliffs and feels camouflaged in the chalky greys and whites? I couldn’t. They stood out. I could only look.
But then I staked a claim on the pebbles, scurriers and dazzling light. I started to paint them and as the colours were found, the little holes and crevices in trees discovered and as I dealt with the problem of waves I fled they were somehow mine. Sometimes when I’m the only one standing near the rocks on the beach with the sound of the water hiding any human ones I can imagine how it all began, how land emerged from water, how water and land defined us, how every tiny separation and division sculpts a new shape.
Freshly mixed hues 