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Tag: beaches

  • Sardinia, bougainvillea and rescue

    Sardinia, bougainvillea and rescue

    At first it was just the intensity at dusk. It made the colours fluoresce, red-violet against green with an intensity that quite took my breath away. The colours of the Mediterranean glow in the mid-summer sunlight

  • “the Channel in the mad March days”

    “the Channel in the mad March days”

    The coasters themselves have vanished save the examples left in Museums. Now looking some 12 miles out to sea, where the westward bound lane of Channel shipping can be seen, ships passing look like huge blocks of flats laden with containers

  • West Coast Harmonies

    West Coast Harmonies

    I never really thought of the Beach Boys as anything more than happy harmonics. West Coast surfer sound lacking the depth, emotional and musical, of the Beatles. They reflected the US West Coast in all its frothy entertainment world frivolity.

  • Diamonds not wardrobes

    Diamonds not wardrobes

    I lay on the beach in the hot African autumn sunshine a century later. Further north the brutal isolation of the Skeleton Coast starts, but here on St. Helena’s Bay the sand was warm and the waves lay their spume, gently, barely feet away as the sea spends its energy. The South Atlantic here is…

  • Seeing Seaford as Home

    Seeing Seaford as Home

    Seaford ticked all the boxes. The beach, cliffs and Downs limit its spread, keeping it free of urban sprawl and giving a more predictable environment than elsewhere. I need to have an horizon, and cityscapes don’t give me that.

  • Of Wood, Waves and Walking

    Of Wood, Waves and Walking

    The line of London plane trees along John Islip street at the back of the Tate gave some striking images, almost monochromatic, but relieved by gleams of the gold and eau de nil colouring of new bark. Their branches drew graphic pictures against the sky, looking like knobkerries where they had been pollarded.

  • Sea Scours Seaford’s Shingle

    Sea Scours Seaford’s Shingle

    It was in 1987 that the groynes on Seaford beach were buried under tons of imported gravel, brought in to boost the defences along the beachfront. The reinforcing of the shingle bank, helping to keep high seas at bay from the town centre.

  • Impressionism in Winter

    Impressionism in Winter

    A camera is a poor second to drawing, but when it is as cold as it has been recently, or as wet and stormy then being like an impressionist and trying to work away outside, using pencils or pastels is coming close to martyrdom. I don’t do martyrdom, although if you listen to Barry, our…

  • Capturing the Colour and Movement of the Sea

    Capturing the Colour and Movement of the Sea

    The Impressionists went to the south of France for the light. English artists found their vision at home, Constable in Suffolk, Turner in Sussex. Sussex is now my ‘home ground’ and the light is startling in its clarity, cleansed by sea breezes and enhanced by wide horizons of the Downs and the seascape

  • Seeing Seaford’s Sunset on the Sea Shore

    Seeing Seaford’s Sunset on the Sea Shore

    Dad taught me to see, taught me to draw. He had an artistic side that rarely found any outlet. He did a little marquetry but enjoyed teaching me how to image a ship’s bow looming up, how to image a Spitfire wing growing realistically off a fuselage.

  • Last Light at Days End

    Last Light at Days End

    The sun shone amber and pink onto the cliffs, their colour reflected in a sea that was calm and blue. I stopped to talk to a violinist and painter from Minnesota about mastery of instruments in both art and music,

  • Seaford Seashore Shingle Shovelled

    Seaford Seashore Shingle Shovelled

    Seaford’s seashore is a single shingle bank. Not a beach it seems but actually Seaford’s sea defence system. Some say this sea defence was made necessary by the extensions to Newhaven harbour, and the wakes of the larger vessels going in to the port which scoured away the previous sandy beach. Whatever the reason as…