Into the Deep

I really enjoyed working through this painting.   I've got so many ideas at the moment and my mind feels very hectic, but it seems to be that when I sit down to work through these ideas, my hand and eye override the busy thoughts and produce something quite calming and simplistic.   This is a painting where I have explored just a couple of pictorial elements, the sky and the horizon, and within those elements I'm looking at light and texture and contrast, but overall I seem to complete a very calming almost stripped back image.   I wanted to echo that very feeling I have when I get to the coast and see the horizon, glancing it for the first time coming over the hills and then when you get down to the waterfront and gaze out across the sea.  It's almost hypnotic and I find I instantly slip into a different mode of thought, a different set of priorities and I'm a lot more present in the moment.

I like to listen to the radio when I paint and for this I was listening to a production of James Follet's Earthsearch II.  Every time I walk past this canvas, I am transported back to the story and images of space and remote planets, terraformed and barely touched by human intervention, slight sci-fi tangent there but that's how it goes in my studio :-)