Painting “The Turquoise Bay”
Studio Painting – Oil on Canvas
This seaside landscape oil painting, on canvas, was inspired during a walk by the sea around a coastal headland on a beautiful summer's day
An oil painting inspired by Bridlington as I hiked around Flamborough Head one day.
Flamborough Head sticks out into the sea by about 6 miles (10km), I believe. The 9 miles I walked that day did not cover the whole of the coastline attributed to the headland.
This painting depicts one of the notable characteristics of walking this part of the coast. The numerous dips you climb down and back up again.
It was a marvelous day: bright sunshine glittered on a turquoise sea, under a blue sky over Brid's wide sweeping bay. The sunshine was all the more precious because of the gathering cloud in the distance. Fortunately it stayed away.
Acrobatic little birds, nesting near-by, flitted past up and down the cliff edge. Martins nest in the sandy top soil along this coast in summer.
They passed so close at times you felt like you could reach out and touch them. They're the detail that completes this landscape art.
A perfect summer day made all the more precious by the approach of rain from over the seaside town in the distance.
I wanted to keep this painting simple, vibrant and bold. Yet, at the same time, I wanted to capture the richness of the Summer's day.
Late Summer long grasses, sporting a profusion of seed heads, betray which way the wind blows, and give the painting a richness of texture and movement.
The coast path meanders among all the exuberance of summer, down and back up the undulating contours. A hardy Gorse, so common on the English coast, clings to the cliff top above the vivid sea.
This was a fun painting to do of the kind of walk that stays in your memory for years to come.