It was February holiday 2024, my newly separated family was not sure how to proceed with holidays, my youngest refused to go away with her father. We had just Christmassed together in Cape Verde on the back of my late father’s funeral. I had not been in my studio for about eight or nine months due to having an extended house guest and my fathers year long deterioration. I didn’t insist she went and I didn’t postpone the exhibition, However I had to prepare for an exhibition I didn’t know I had signed up for. It was not, as I had thought, a month of having the shop to sell my own prints and cards, it was putting 25 (about) original paintings on the walls of a very narrow corridor at Cockenzie House.
I did not manage to photograph them all nicely before they went up and when they were up I couldn’t get a good angle. I wanted to make a tunnel of blue like that blow up colour tent thing that used to come to Edinburgh Festival where you could sit in the different colours, if anyone finds the website for it please let me know it was years ago.
Some of these are available to buy. Just ask. Or keep an eye on instagram.
As someone who mainly paints animals, I decided to make a Sea Scape Exhibition, why?
I was processing my grief at loosing my father to dementia and cancer. But also, I had this collection of unframed and often unresolved sea paintings in acrylic and pastel. I find the sea endlessly fascinating and soothing and enlivening and dangerous and healing all at the same time. I was also reading about Celtic Christianity prior to this and was struck how the early Christians would walk along the sea shore singing to God or Jesus, singing into the sea spray so the water would carry their voices. I like to have images of water in my own home, just to remind me the sea is there if I need to breathe and stretch and brush off the dust of everyday living. I live near the sea and I had done a sea painting course online. I used to go and make sketchbooks of beach scenes along the coast, when we moved house I started going to the fields instead, the coast had become busier since lockdown and many more dog owners meant I could no longer leave my dog to dig holes while I drew. I didn’t sketch the fields though I did come back and make images of the wild animals and more and more my bird obsession with the merlin app/ But more of that another time.
The sea is hard to paint BUT but if you want to be surrounded by sea but you are trapped indoors by commitments but you have paint and paper then it’s happy escape to the blue.
Blue, in colour therapy treats depression, it helps us to feel more alert and calm. I went to a Steiner School and the walls were always painted for our development. Do you notice that at the coast, in Scotland when its misty which is a lot. The very air seems more blue. Especially on a small island like Iona where the blue is all around.
If you don’t have a painting habit can I suggest coloured glasses?
Day and Night at the beach. My photos from North Berwick and Dunbar.
So when they say art is therapy, Do they mean colour therapy?
Because it’s also a job, its difficult, it’s a skill, It’s a learned behaviour, it’s a calling. It’s requires all of you. It’s away to create your own world.
Soft pastel study
Smell the Sea and feel the sky let your soul and spirit fly – Van Morrison
