Ragged Cloth Cafe, serving Art and Textiles

I love being near the sea, on it, in it, or by it. The sea has inspired much of my work, and so I was interested when recently I read a post on Alice Fox’s blog about that very subject. I wondered how many artists I could think of just off the top of my head, who have a substantial body of work referencing the sea – and all of the ones I have come up with are British. Is it because we Brits are living on a small island, have a maritime history, and none of us is that far from the sea – or is that we are a crowded land and the sea offers us long open views and entrancing light?

Alice Fox: Sand streams 3 (detail) from here
I first stumbled upon Alice Fox’s work when she had a residency at Spurn Point. Her work was to do with the edge between the sea and the land, that glorious shifting margin around its constants, regular revised revisitings bringing its temporary, delightful detritus. Her work captures so much of the ephemeral moments like the ever moving waves, the shifting sands, the tumbling pebbles, the water, the developing rust…

Debbie Lyddon: Aeolian Pipes, from here
Debbie Lyddon also works on that margin of the land and the sea. There is an article about her work Caught by the Tide on the TextileArtist blog. That east coast attracts several of the artists I know about: such as Joan Eardley (mentioned in my post here)

Joan Eardley: Sea and Snow, from here

and Pauline Burbidge – who has done much work based on water, has in the past couple of years made some wondrous pieces inspired by the tidal causeway to Lindisfarne not far from her home.

Pauline Burbidge: Causeway III, from here
A few years ago she also made a quilt inspired by the view across the Atlantic from Applecross in Scotland.

Pauline Burbidge: Applecross (detail), from here
The ceramic artist Annie Turner’s work is inspired by the estuary: detritus, mud, discarded tools such as nets, shells, … they contribute to her spare elegant pieces.

Annie Turner: Oyster Net

Annie Turner: Sea Breeze
The work of Polly Binns is also inspired by wetlands at the edge of the sea. Mud sounds so pejorative as a word, and yet it is mud and what lives in it, is washed up onto it, is impressed in it which inspires. It is part of that edge world which changes both predictably and unpredictably day by day, hour by hour, season by season, ever changing yet keeping somehow the same fascination, whatever.

Polly Binns: Landmark, from here
Anita Reynolds is a printmaker and painter who over the past couple of years has walked round the coast of Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset: the South West Coastal Path. She makes an interesting point in her blog about the changing topography:
Walking through new landscapes has been exciting as well as a little daunting. Knowing how long it takes to really understand a place makes me uncertain that I can represent it by just walking through. On the other hand I found that the familiarity of my home stretch made me not look with fresh eyes. I guess you get different things from first contact compared with the deeper understanding gained after many visits.

Anita Reynolds: Day 1, Hurlstone Point from Bossington Beach
Can one ever be familiar with the sea itself? Two artists who give us magnificent glimpses of it are Maggi Hambling and John Virtue. I love those waves, that power, that snapshot of the enigmatic sculptural presence: a force which can and does destroy. Turner also captured moments of light over the sea, and I so enjoy his complementing the elements with the human interaction in the form of working ships.

JMW Turner: Snow Storm – Steam Boat off Harbour’s Mouth, from here
Of course, there are many many paintings of bathers. I think that most of them are really about the figures disporting themselves rather than about the element in which they bathe. I have always admired Duncan Grant’s painting of bathers, however, not only because of the bodies, but also because of his treatment of the sea.

Duncan Grant: Bathing, from here

I have probably forgotten someone important, and would love to be reminded of or introduced to other artists who were inspired by the sea and its edges to make a significant body of work.