Over half way through!

Yes, I am over half way through my Twelve Months on an Essex Island painting project!

My most recent painting – Essex Island: July – was of a bit of the Mersea coast that I had never been to before. I walked down Empress Avenue until I got to the beach, and then turned left, eastwards. It was a very low tide, as near the time of the full moon, but a bright sunny morning with only a swathe of cirrus on the horizon and a few vapour trails in a blue sky.

I walked until I had passed all the beach huts and came upon an area where the land rose up quite high above the beach, which gave a good view out to sea. The tide was beginning to come in by this time, and the water was starting to cover the sand and mud below me on the shore line.

All my Mersea paintings are 45cm square, and are acrylic on board, some of them with added oil pastel and other media. This one is just acrylic. They can all be found on my Gallery 2022 page.

I picked up all sorts of bits as I walked along the beach, including a nice big hag stone.  Back home I sorted out the four things I wanted to draw, and completed my Findings drawing.

This drawing, only 15cm square, is done using Pitt Pastel pencils on Daler Rowney pastel paper. It can be found, along with the first six Findings drawings, on the Small Paintings and Drawings page – see the menu above.

I will be showing all my Mersea paintings, and all my un-sold Findings drawings at our Anglian Arts Project exhibition at the Sentinel Gallery in Chapel Road, Wivenhoe, which starts on Tuesday, 13th September and runs until Sunday, 18th September.  If you hop over to the Anglian Arts Project page – again, see the menu bar above – you can see the poster and read about the eight exhibitors. This time we have watercolour painting, fused glass, machine embroidery, ceramics, alpaca textiles, jewellery, lino prints – and of course, I will be showing my work, too!

If you haven’t been to the Sentinel Gallery for a while, I can tell you that it has changed utterly since our last show there in September 2019! Under new ownership, the whole of the downstairs has been turned round, building work done, walls knocked down. It is a much larger, lighter, more airy and welcoming venue now. Graham and I will be there all day every day – except for Saturday afternoon, 17th, when I will be there, with another friend helping, as Graham is off to sing for a wedding! I look forward to welcoming you.