Streamline Serenity … Painting Mawgan Porth

I never tire of painting Mawgan Porth.

I first discovered this beautiful Cornish beach more than 30 years ago, visiting with my children, and I have loved it ever since. For the last ten years I have also had the pleasure of working and painting here regularly.

Yet however often I look at it, it never seems quite the same.

The light changes. The tide changes. The weather changes. Reflections appear and disappear, colours shift and familiar shapes suddenly look completely different.

Painting Mawgan Porth En Plein Air

There is something very special about painting en plein air at Mawgan Porth. Feeling the elements against your face, hearing the sea and watching the light change in front of you gives you information that no photograph can completely capture.

You notice the movement of the water, the changing colour of the sand, the softness of distant cliffs and the way reflections move across the wet beach.

Of course, Cornwall also has plenty of rainy days.

Those days bring a different kind of pleasure. I love painting commissions from photographs too, particularly when the image represents someone's treasured memory, favourite place or a moment that means something very personal to them.

Streamline Serenity

Streamline Serenity captures one of the quieter moods of Mawgan Porth.

The stream winds towards the sea, the rocks emerge through the water and soft reflections move across the wet sand.

Water has always been one of my favourite subjects to paint because it is never truly still. Even in a peaceful scene there is movement, transparency, reflection and changing colour.

That is part of what keeps Mawgan Porth so interesting to me as an artist.

I may know the beach well, but each change in weather, tide and light creates another version of it.

Perhaps that is why, after all these years, I still find something new every time I pick up a brush.

Streamline Serenity … Mawgan Porth, Cornwall.