Ocean Edge

I have lived on this Atlantic coast for nearly thirty years and have seen the dynamic of changing weather that close proximity to the edge of a large ocean brings, through the seasons it can be by turns wild and sublime but it is seldom passive.

So too in the upsurge of hills and mountains on the edge of these tectonic plates that once caused volcanoes and lava flows from Mull and the small isles north and are still active as their point of pressure moves beyond Iceland today. The legacy of this activity in combination with ice sheets and glaciers created the soils and the flora which we see around us, and with a little knowledge it is easy to read this landscape whose skin is so thin and whose ancient bones are so close to the surface.

When these oceanic energies meet the craggy rocks and sandy strands of that western edge where the light is always changing as the tides ebb and flow, as the ever-present wind whips the sunshine and clouds across the turquoise water and the myriad flowers of the machair blow to and fro; then there is work to do!  To achieve this the painter must use a different language to hold down what is fleetingly there, describing light with colours that dance and sing beside each other. Complimentary colours invigorate each other, broad marks are stopped by small sharp gestures, it is necessary, if you can, to abandon analytical thinking for a while and to just feel the world around you; not to stand apart and observe but to dissolve your edges and become seamlessly part of it all.

James Hawkins, 2007