February is here, whispering promises of longer days and shorter nights. Slow, heavy-skied, lumbering January has blown through in a vacillating procession of damp, lingering skies and tempestuous squalls. Now it has begun, February hastens on at a brusque, brisk pace: the shortest month of the year honoured with heralding the long-awaited spring.
Over recent years, my work has focused on the passing of the seasons and the changes each brings to the landscape around me. Time and time again I return to familiar spots but at different times of day, year and in differing weather conditions trying to capture the old in the new; the change in the constant. Daily walks with my dog along the sweeping bay of Blackwaterfoot provide much inspiration. The beachscape is sculpted afresh with each tide, shifting sand and shingle, the upright marram grass flanking the beach the constant sentinel amidst the daily flux.
Since my childhood, dawn and dusk have always held a certain fascination for me and feature often in my paintings. I love the clash of dark and light as day battles it out with night. Each dawn and each dusk unique, the jewel bright colours of the new day rise to split the deep, velvet darkness of the night and the falling light of dusk deepens and darkens to swallow the fiery death throes of the day. At the beginning and ending of each day there is a fleeting moment when the colours of the land, sea and sky shift and shudder, when anything and everything seems possible.
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