This year I have been focusing on a series of work for a project about Borders that I mentioned in one of my Newsletters. As it has been a year of bad health problems I have not made as much work as I would have liked. I have worried that it did not relate to the abstract work I did last year but sometimes it is good to have a rest and practice some straightforward studies. As I had started to use soft pastels more and more it was an opportunity to push the way I was using them but also mix with graphite collage and on the last one I am making introduce acrylic paint to lift the surface texture. I am a very slow worker, building and covering the surface or sometimes reworking it completely until it satisfies me. Sometimes I wish I had left well alone as I lost bits I liked, but I know it will get where I want eventually.

Once I decide to begin a new project of borders between land sky and water. Looking through old work, I rediscovered two drawings of Scarborough South Bay and decided they fitted my brief but needed reworking as they were adequate but dull. As the sea is dynamic it wasn’t too hard to energise them and add mood with marks and colour.

I don’t live near the sea now. My nearest water is the tidal Humber with its shifting sand banks giving me a different set of problems. The Humber has so much silt it is often the colour of fudge. It is hard to use this colouring and still interpret it as water! The land is flat the sky huge. Seeing a programme about Claude Monet and hearing him talk of his problems helped me enormously. His series of similar images under different light also influenced me and making my composition repetitive of land, river, land and sky, allows me to concentrate simply on colour, texture and mark making.

Stormy Night Scarbourgh S. Bay

2022

20 x 29 CM

End of Day, Scarborough South Bay

2022

20 x 29 CM