BURNT ISLAND (SOLD)

Burnt Island is a small island linked at low tide to St Agnes, Isles of Scilly. It is covered in thrift and coarse grasses. To walk there you clamber over rocks, around rockpools containing colourful seaweed and small sea creatures. I recall walking over to Burnt Island as a child and being dazzled by the summer light and enchanted by this bleached and salty environment. I remember finding the clean white bones of long dead seabirds and brightly coloured fragments of nets and smoothed pieces of shattered plastic buoys. In this painting I try to capture the openness I felt on this rectangular island with the movement of birds swirling overhead, gliding invisibly against white summer clouds, and the waves of the sea edging the limits of this temporary promontory.

I have used a combination of acrylic paint, mixes of cerulean blue, burnt ochre, burnt sienna and phthalo turquoise, as well as titanium white and mars black. The paint has been applied using different sized brushes and a silicon wedge. I have also applied deep intense patches of charcoal, as well as soft pastel lines and smudges to add different textures and intensity. This painting is built up of layers which have been applied and removed.