back to tentsmuir

we hadn’t been because of the fiercely cold weather and the snow, which combined makes the back roads very slippery, and they tend to close the carpark if there’s slippery black ice

we had been to to the Old Golf Course which backs onto West Sands beach, in a cold east wind. it looked like and felt like tundra.

but the beach would have been colder.

another two days and things were radically different, although there were lumps of snow about for a week, things felt much warmer, and better underfoot. there was still a cold wind, it was so strong that the next couple of days I had a sore hip from trudging down the beach against it.

B seemed immune to the cold and the strength of the wind

and the sand smoking along it in stinging flurries

I used the Hipstamatic app and got some inspiring photos towards paintings

where the little burn exits onto the beach is a marvellous in-between place of reflections

and peaty water

directly influencing more acrylic-on-paper kitchen table paintings

more the beginning of something than ends in themselves

I got a bit carried away with the lushness of the paint

and this one has a lot of scraping on and off

end point of the walk

a marker and a mark in the landscape

on the beach itself it’s always about the light

but also then there are delicate objects that catch the eye

reminding me of my friend Daphne Wright’s work in plaster and resin.

another interesting piece arrived this week, I swapped it for this one

with Shelford Chandler, who makes these sculptural abstract landscapes with found materials

it looked too lonely up there on the wall by itself so for now it’s keeping company with my big norfolk landscape

there are elements in both that speak to each other, especially in the colours and subject matter.