Image size 95cm x 145cm (framed size 115cm x 165cm)
Watercolour on Paper
£8,500

I was delighted with the outcome of this painting. It was always going to be a challenge painting such a flat landscape, I’m really not used to it. In addition there were no vertical lines to break the composition up. So I had to embrace the horizontal. The palette was another way of creating difference. However the driving influence in this painting is the tide. The low lying land of East Anglia is perhaps greater exposed to the sea as anywhere in Britain. I wanted to capture the wonderful low horizon lines of this landscape. This is about slippery wet mud of sand eels and worms and flocks of birds. More than in any other painting, I really wanted the sky, the land, and the sea to mirror each other; not just in terms of the colours but of the shapes.

As with all Überpaintings, the long shadows are an essential construct to the work. I use these heavily to provide a hint to a continuity from outside the constraint of the composition. It must be recognised that in all painting as with the way we see the world, there are objects that influence the image we are looking at, without neccessarily being able to see them ourselves. So I’m wanting the viewer to imagine a larger landscape.