That first Real Spring Light on the North Cornwall Coast
There’s a moment every year when it changes. And this year, it was more welcome than most. You start to feel it before you see it.
A change in the overcoat, warmth on the face and a changing light on the water. I was walking the cliffs the other morning, the wind still carrying a trace of winter in it, when the light shifted. Just slightly and enough to stop me. As often happens, I am attuned to capture these glimmers and glimpses of something extraordinary. The sea looked different. Not brighter exactly…but clearer.
All winter the colours sit low — greys, deep greens, heavy skies pressing down. Something now has lifted and you realise you’ve been waiting for it after a series of very wet weeks. Looking at the waves, it’s in the edges first. Along the line where the wave turns. A thin, almost hidden brightness… not quite blue yet, but on its way.
That’s the thing about this time of year — Spring doesn’t arrive in colour, it arrives in light.
That first real spring light doesn’t shout. It doesn’t give you everything all at once.
It just gives you enough. Enough to notice. Enough to begin again and feel the need to paint . Remembering in paint , I will take this feeling into the studio. This is where the next paintings will come from. Spring is just a favourite and revel in the seasons. There is a shift, new shoots, new ideas. Something just beginning to show itself in the water.
The featured image is a painting of a valley very close to the studio that goes down to the sea. Full of that magical spring light and yellow speckled gorse hedges.