take one picture…
Of Salt & Sand & Morning Light - Carolyn J Roberts
“The first music you really fall in love with is more than just music. It’s something that clicks in you beyond the song; it’s a message or image that causes you to jump in and not let go.”
I don’t know about you, but even though I create lots of work I like, there are always some paintings that particularly resonate with me, that just click, and you can almost hear yourself shout ‘Yes!!
Of Salt & Sand & Morning Light is one such painting… I love the north Norfolk coastline and it’s a part of the country we visit regularly. The area has a special place in my heart…the big skies and wide horizons reminiscent of my fenland childhood. The creeks and marshes hold endless fascination, with the birdsong and open spaces adding to that sense of space…
Of Salt & Sand & Morning Light was one of those intuitive paintings; I worked with a sense of freedom, allowing the paint to flow, with only the lightest of brushstrokes…imagining myself out there on the marshes, the tide trickling into the creeks, the distant cry of the birds carried on the wind… It came together quite quickly, and, amazingly, considering how often I ignore my own advice, I managed not to fiddle, just letting the watercolour and ink interact naturally, with the addition of the drawn lines at the end. And for me, the painting works; the expressive quality, the mixing of the mediums reminiscent of the water trickling into the creeks, the swathe of clouds on a vast horizon…for me, this captures the watery landscape of north Norfolk. Now, if only I could paint like this all of the time… (Of Salt & Sand & Morning Light is available on my website….)
“..the western glories fade and pass. The twilight deepens more and more.
A thin mist, like a breath on glass, veils shining stream and distant shore;
And night is falling, still and cool, on each broad marsh and silent pool.
The moor-hen paddles in the weeds no longer, for her chicks are fed;
The heron, rising from the reeds, goes slowly sailing home to bed;
Just now, from off that mossy bank, the little brown rat slipped and sank.
Night comes at length. The last pale gleam of lingering day has disappeared.
On silent fields and quiet stream a few stars shine; the mist has cleared;
The willows of the further shore stand outlined on the sky once more.
A faint dawn breaks on yonder sedge, and broadens in that bed of weeds;
A bright disc shows its radiant edge, the round moon rises from the reeds;
Its level rays of silver glide across the steel-dark river tide...”