New paintings and regular art updates.
It looks like a coastline with crumpled cliffs and a sandy, rocky beach below. But is that a tall building above the cliff? The scale is wrong. And why is the left side of the sky paler than the right hand side? Because this is actually a close up of an old window, the paint has come off the frame and the wood is dry and brittle. Photo taken a few years ago at Spode Works, Elanora street, Stoke upon Trent.
When he was young he used to climb
But I had no head for heights
He’d climb down cliffs
Or up tall pikes
While I stood by in fear
He’d disappear below my view
And I would cower in dread
Till he came back from his perch
On steps above the sea.
He never slipped, or dropped or fell
I was so proud of him
While I crawled on hands and knees
A victim of vertigo,
Atop the smallest hill!
Now he had fallen out of sight
Never to reappear
But I will wait and hope one day
I’ll join him safely, my fate?
Beach or mountains? Which do you prefer? Why?
Only because I’m not good at climbing. The worst walk I ever went on was a steep hill in the pennines. First the sole of one of my boots came unglued and started flapping around. We were only halfway up the hill. I solved it by tying it back on with my laces, but that made the bit round my ankle loose!
Then when we got to the top it was raining sideways and foggy. We sheltered behind the trig point at the top. This was two walls in a cross shape, so whatever direction the wind was blowing you could get out of it. When we decided to walk down we walked over the plateau at the top, only to find it was another side of the hill with a twenty foot drop and no path down!
Luckily we managed to find our way back across the top. By the time we started down the rain was making puddles on my glasses, the water was seeping through my coat, I was freezing cold and my boot sole was flapping about again….
That’s why I prefer beaches. Not lying on them, but exploring rock pools and caves. Visiting seaside cafes, and walking along coastal paths, as long as they aren’t at the top of cliffs!
Memory of a trip to the Southwest of England. We stopped off at a lovely sea cove, and on the cliffs above it there were bright red poppies. These were so cheering, waving in the breeze along with rough stalks of grass. I need to paint a picture of a poppy field, this might be an inspiration to work from.
Build your castles on the sand and they might be washed away. Water creeps or washes in. It sinks down under the sand. The beach quakes. The rocks fall….
What is sand? Silica, ground up rock and shells. Sand can be melted into glass, a solid once liquid. Fused in heat either through vulcanism, lightening (did you know when lightening strikes damp sand it can melt a branching path through it, like plant roots?). Humans also build kilns and create glass to be blown or fused or slumped.
The sea washes or crashes in to a beach. Longshore drift pushes sand and rock sideways and along a coast. In a severe storm sand can be stripped off a beach completely, and yet it can equally be washed back again.
The world warms, water rises, sand washes away, cliffs crumble, castles crumble.
Life changes and evolves.
Mallaband-Brown