Tag: Seaford Head
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Looking into the light
I go down to the studio with my vision fractionally altered by a morning walk. Seaford’s clear air clarifies and intensifies colour, especially at sunrise. It’s part of an evolution as an artist and the challenge to keep disciplined
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The Ponderwall
It started with the weather images. Today I take them with a sophisticated digital camera but I started them in pre-digital times as small gouache paintings done very quickly and very small from my back doorstep
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Stepping Out
In an earlier essay on here I wrote about ‘Following in Slaters Footsteps’ which may have been seen to imply I copy what he did. That would not be terribly creative would it? No, I follow his footsteps as he walked Seaford and the Cuckmere from where he lived, just up the road from me.…
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Storm Winds
I snuggle under the duvet and remember when I once stood watch as a volunteer in the coast watch tower further along the coast. That day was a real storm, blowing hard, wind howling through the railings like a demented banshee as we climbed the steps to the tower.
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…And the Sea Steamed
The colour of the water, paler for quite a way out from the Cuckmere River mouth as fresh water entered the ocean, was indeed steaming.
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Moving Forwards?
For a couple of months, I have struggled in the studio. Drawings based on Gropius’ house in Dessau fill sketchbook pages. Images of the trees around the ‘masters houses’ of the Bauhaus, printed out, litter my worktable. My ‘bag’ is colour of course, and like most war time images the photographs I have taken in…
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Living is Easy
One of these mornings you’re gonna rise up singing. Yes, you’ll spread your wings, and you’ll take to the sky. But ’til that morning, there’s nothing can harm you. Gershwin In my last piece I wrote how being away with the faeries led to the fall – not into the devil’s hands but a…
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In Slater’s Footsteps
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas With the addition of a photographic record of decay, the four books of images of paintings and photographs of the sea defences at the Cuckmere…
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Diamonds in the Rough
The footpath over the cliffs sees 300,000 plus people making the walk along the path annually. Many stop to admire the cottages, an iconic view that is featured in movies all over the world; been used by pop stars as a backing to their music; is used by TV plays; detective series;
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Looking Good
It was cool and calm, not the frenetic bustle of the city, where the buildings would raise the temperature by a couple of degrees. Nature supplements the human activity beyond Splash Point, where the Kittiwake colony nests each year. A convocation of kittiwakes by the cliffs held a council meeting, another group bobbing further out…
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Silver Sheets
The colour of the sky varied but it was its pellucid blue that enticed me to the seafront where I was fascinated by the silver sheets the surf laid down on the orange-brown of the shingle, accompanied by soft susurrations as the surf withdrew
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Weather Watched
The routine includes the cat of course, and can provide a moment of stillness, of prayer, in the flow of the day. In the last couple of years, I have added a limited commentary (limited by the number of characters the Beeb allows) to my observations, data fed by a local weather station and observation.…
