Beach Wanderer
For as long as I remember I have been a beach wanderer. Feeling at one with the sand, the rocks, driftwood, the call of seagulls, varied rhythms of the waves. As a child I spent summers at my materal grandparents home on Salt Spring Island living in a miner's tent on the beach with my mother and siblings. We built our childish summer homes with driftwood and washed up pieces of lumber. Paths to the door were designed with rounded rocks of soft shades of blues, sienna, paynes grey, earthy brown, white with black and grey speckles and black with white designs. Indoors the floors were damp hardened sand, curtains made from green and yellow seaweed and kelp, dishes of shells, blue black mussle shells and crab shells decorated the walls.
In memory, as time moved on, I painted beachscapes but one day I was sitting quietly on a log looking down capivated by the rocks and shells under my feet. A small portion of the larger beach. This tiny section of the whole seemed more significant and personal than the entire beach. Each rock was its own individual shape, colour, design. I was fascinated by the thought that each rock, shell or piece of shell, bits of driftwood were one but made up the whole beach. I quickly made some small simple sketches, nothing involved but it sparked an inspiration to, over the years, explore and create more up close and personal images . I share the process in the following images.