Painting “Tide Out in The Bay”
Plein‑Air Painting – Acrylic on Paper
Selwicks Bay, Flamborough Head, East Yorkshire, England, UK
These white cliffs are the only chalk cliffs (like those on the South coast) in the North of England.
Flamborough Head is an incredible place. I'm confident saying there is nowhere else like it in the UK.
If you look closely at the landscape painting, you can just make out two tiny people in the bay near the shadow. This gives you a sense of the scale of the place.
Beyond the horizon in this painting, the cliffs continue, and rise to over 400ft. Not quite as tall as those on the South coast, but impressive all the same. Especially when you know they're also the home of the largest mainland colony of seabirds in the UK.
Like many of my other paintings, this was painted on location, sitting in the updraft on top of the cliffs. There's rarely absolute stillness in the air there. You can see the grasses in the foreground were being blown by the wind. Fortunately it wasn't strong enough to stop me painting.
This is a haven for visitors, bird watchers, photographers interested in landscape art and nature, kestrels, seals, a myriad of seabirds, and of course, artists.
When the seabird colony, just up the coast, is attracting its residents, you can see them migrating past in flocks. Playing follow-my-leader, they navigate around this headland that sticks out into the sea by some 6 miles (10km), I think.
This is why you get flights of bird watchers standing out on the very tip of the headland.
I love painting at Flamborough, and usually rock‑up several times each year with my easel and brushes.
This is a prime example of the kind of observational work I do when outdoors. All my art, including my studio paintings and prints, begins with this kind of plein‑air work.