A Cornish Seascape -Surrender to the Ocean

Surrender to the Ocean is the title of my centre piece Cornish seascape for my exhibition ‘The Sea and Me’ held in August 2017 at the Castle, Bude.

With no particular aim or scene in mind, I had one large painting to make for my exhibition and I had a blank 140 x 90 cm stretched canvas to fill.

I always have an iconic wave painting for my exhibition each year and I wanted this to be much more fluid rather than drawn, a certain wateriness whilst having vibrancy and lots of movement and energy.

The first washy layers gave me some form and the wave revealed itself.

The finished painting for the exhibition. It had mixed reactions, but everyone felt like they were standing in front of something quite formidable. I just wanted to dive under it… to surrender to the ocean, but for some it, they felt overwhelmed and feared drowning.

I had very little time to complete it and after the exhibition, I actually completely painting out the foreground and reworked it, strengthening the whole painting. The foreground spatters didn’t make sense to me and were too random lacking depth and tonality. The finished reworked painting now hangs in Rick Steins restaurant at Porthleven.