Heading into April, I’ve been working on a new range of seascape paintings in watercolour. I’ve chosen to explore the light and atmosphere found at the coast at St Annes-on-sea in Lancashire. Many of these paintings are based on sunset views and my most recent being Serene twilight, St Annes-on-sea.

I love the sense of peace and calm that surrounds sunset over the sea. Since I first visited the beach as a child, it always seemed to me a magical time of day. When the sea transforms into a glistening areas of light and dark. With the white of sunlight and the full display of intense colours.

Many of my walks to the shore over the sands at St Annes-on-sea have been peppered with the sound of seabirds, usually the gull or sometimes the soft call of sanderlings.

I often include sea birds in my beach paintings as a way of suggesting scale and to offer some further focal points or changes of rhythm within the space I paint. Very often I find them flying about me when I am on the beach as a matter of course, or over our garden in St Annes.

Space, light and the beautiful colours of sunset are expressed in Serene twilight, St Annes-on-sea. Calm waves catch the golden light of sunset as they fall away to the soft sands of the shore. The density of nearer clouds reveal richer tones and colour against the high blue sky away from the horizon.

This new watercolour painting uses Daniel Smith professional paints with Winsor & Newton on Royal Watercolour Society paper. It is ready to frame and would make a lovely fine art reminder of a refreshing, serene twilight by the sea.

Published April 2019