New paintings and regular art updates.
Storm warning. There is a storm in the bay of biscay heading our way. Expect a red sky in the morning and a swirl of rain edging up the country. Some flooding and fallen trees expected. Nice, just when I was hoping for late summer sun! The wind will blow and we shall have? Storms! I had such plans a seaside trip, gentle tides, a sea view, seagulls wheeling. But maybe next week it will be better….
We were going to the seaside
We were going to the sea.
We were going to have icecream
We were going to see seagulls
Tides
Waves
Beaches
Fish and chips
We WERE going to Wales
We’re not now
Sadly lockdown is here
Now
Sad
On a cloud or the sea
Waves washing you
Onto a beach
Bricks and lamposts
Windows and shutters
Chimneys and trees
Cold air and breeze
bluest of blues
Shattering Sapphire
Clouds smudged on the sky.
Brick spaceship
Alien building
Spinning out of control.
I was looking at Maori designs for whales and Orcas and saw one for a dolphin. I haven’t copied it but this is similar, with my own spin. I was still thinking of Auntysocials challenge to do something with her black and white piano keys. It won’t be possible to do womething like this without cutting and shaping piano keys. But it’s just an idea. I’m not quite sure why I added the waves. I can imagine the dolphin jumping.
Shouldn’t have added the curly lines to the title. It seems to read dolphik! Or dolphink, oh dear!
Tree, look after me,
Let me climb up and see
Where the world ends
Where the sea sweeps
High views
Cliff edges,
Sand bars
Tree you let me see far
Over hill and vale
Into the distant waves
Crashing across the earth’s face
Like tears and mountains,
Flying spray
Blowing limbs from the tree
In a gale.
Dreamt the first two lines of this poem So I decided to go for it and see what emerged….
There’s a sullen red cloud on the horizon,
A ships in dock they say..
Will there be sailors in port today,
Or will it sail away?
Off to chase the Mackrel
Or to fish for Cod
Leaving on the high tide
Into the hands of God?
There’s red upon the horizon
Is it a sailors blood?
Staining the water with it
In a storm greater than the flood.
Will the sailors return again
Back to this quiet bay?
No man of weather can tell me.
But the portents are bad, they say.
And January sea, up in North Wales. Wide views looking far away to the Snowdonia range of mountains. How I miss driving along the A55 west, climbing past Chester and Queensferry. Then coming out high above Prestatyn and Rhyl, looking over to the mountains. Swooping down the road to St Asaph, then right over the flat ground towards the coast. I first saw that view when I was about ten or eleven when we took a coach trip to a caravan park near Rhyl. I remember catching a crab on the beach and putting it in my plastic bucket. The crab crawled out and nipped my toe when I put my shoe on in the morning.
We were at the back of the caravan site where the trains from Chester raced past on their way to the station. Holidays were walking along the back and paddling in the sea. Collecting razor shells and other classic shell type shells (still don’t know what they are called), strange how a single view of the sea can drag up so many memories.
Little Mountain
Soaked with wave
Are you frightened
Are you brave?
Rushing water
Claws at sky
Clutching fingers
White foam
Mount Fuji sturdy
Stands aloft
Life renewed
In August last year we were at Rhyl watching the red arrows flying over the sea, with THOUSANDS of people watching the show on the seafront.
The thought of warm Welsh sea breezes really makes me sad that I can’t go there at the moment.
I remember seeing something like a helicopter, an auto giro I think it was called? And an air and sea rescue helicopter. There were all sorts of different planes doing aerobatics.
The thing is though, I could live without the planes, and the crowds. I just wish I could go and look at the sea again, with its constantly changing waves. To see white horses as the wind whips up the waves. Or a flat calm with blue ripples.
The town must have suffered because of the lockdown. How are people coping? A little town on the North Wales coast, where most of the income is raised from holidays and tourism.
But the sea, that’s what calls me. Great storms, gentle tides, boats and ships, but mainly sea.
X
Cold and grey, day
Not got much to say..
Yet,
Grey as it can get?
You bet.
Till tonight’s sunset?
Maybe
We will see
Unless the sun does shine
Fine.
Then happiness will be mine.
So clouds roll away please,
Give us warmth and ease
Some pleasure we can seize
Till we can visit seas
And oceans.
Give us notions
Of calm and peace
Please.
Mallaband-Brown