40cm square acrylic and mixed media on board
References: Memories of Lighthouses, headlands, resort architecture – all viewed from the sea.
Seeing a lighthouse for the first time from the helm of the cockpit was an unforgettable sight. It’s at once comforrting and foreboding. In Queensland, the lighthouses are run by volunteers who take a regular weekly or two-week shift once a year, certainly a diverting lifestyle break, but the histories of the lighthousemen tell the tales of loneliness and solitude.
The shapes and poisitions of lighthouses hold an allure and enchantment too – the lone building with its light on the high cape on the edge of the sea, its light communicating to ships to stay well clear.
Here I’ve thrown these realities into disarray with the addition of large high-rise resort style buildings creating a contrasting holiday atmosphere. The jaunty flotilla of yachts pass by as if in ignorance of the perils that lie in the rocky seas below.
My perspective is coming from a view from the cockpit; of the land viewed from the sea, I love to create imagined and intricate worlds to describe how we live by the sea. Using simple shapes and expressive line to create life and atmosphere. Painted in July 2024