Baamfest 2016 Community festival - Painting a Seascape

The weather held off and Baamfest 2016 enjoyed some sunshine. I had co ordinated over ten workshops to happen at the event and although most were undercover, the weather makes a big difference in displaying all the work made. Around the theme of the beach, we made over 50 beach huts, 40 windmills, 70 printed seaweed bunting sheets, 80 milk bottle people on sticks, lots of paper cut out beach huts, textile bunting and painted pebbles.

While all this was happening, Pottery box created pottery tiles with beach inspired stamps, Steve Pinchess and Steve Bielby oversaw over 200 people create a scribble board in sharpies and I encouraged over 40 children to have a go at painting a seascape on a 8ft x 4ft ply board.

Having some emulsion myself, some donated and some extra acrylics to create more colours, the kids set to covering the board in paint. There were small delicate waves, splatters from the more confident and lots of hand painting and big brushes with swirls from the younger ones.

The sea came and went, waves appeared and were partially painted out. Not taking control was hard and letting go of some lovely areas even harder. After day one, I wanted to say ‘lets leave it there folks’ and maybe do another one the next day, but as an art therapist who was doing a workshop said ‘just let it go’ and ‘let it become something different’.

I did and the result was brilliant. The kids all signed the back and I now just have to find somewhere to display it.

UPDATE!!

The lovely people at Grosvenor Guest House in Bude have bought it from Bude Arts and Music and it is now taking up the end wall of the their dining/breakfast room for all their visitors to enjoy.