Kynance

Kynance Cove

I first visited Kynance Cove as a child and have returned on a number of occasions to revisit and share this unique place with friends.

Of course it is an impossible place to paint but now painting in relation to the creation of 'art' is no longer mainstream and some would say no longer possible. In painting the search for the new has been all but exhausted.

Kynance Cove is located in South West Cornwall and forms at low tide a family beach with sand, turquoise sea, caves, and serpentine rock. It can cope with a large number of people who, hidden and tucked in the transient corners and secret places, never seem to overpower it. Like a cat it maintains it's dignity, it's untamed quality, it's grace and it's power.

At high tide it reclaims itself. Reinvents and restores its raw power. It becomes truely magnificent. The sea boils silver and blue in a cauldron of black rock. I have watched many times, arriving early at high tide, to witness its unveiling drama. Seen countless people walking towards the beach stop motionless absorbed in the theatre of waves.

I have concentrated on this theatre, the complex movement that the place has. The whole experience. The small pink sea thrift, the beat and pulse of the waves, the independence, the dichotomy of the reclaiming. They are not paintings of Kynance Cove they are paintings involving response, about the static painting of movement, the ideas generated by a place, about tackling the impossible, about reinventing and restoring power, about looking for ways to paint.