Below is a selection of seascape studies and studio paintings I have created during and after my many trips around the British coastline, and sometimes further afield. As a keen camper, I enjoy exploring the coast thoughout the year to make sketches and paint plein air studies.
Loose painting of ancient, fishing village of Clovelly in Devon.
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
45 x 60cm
I created the painting from sketches and studies made during a camping trip to Devon and Cornwall.
Oil on premium canvas
45 x 60cm
I created the painting from sketches and studies made during a camping trip to Devon and Cornwall.
Oil on premium canvas
45 x 60cm
Painted after a sketching and camping trip to West Runton. It is finally ready to varnish and hang.
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
40 x 60cm
Once a haunt for smugglers, Weybourne beach is now a peaceful place to sit and listen to the waves rushing over the pebbles.
Oil on premium canvas
40 x 50cm
Oil painting Tintagel Cove, Cornwall. I created the painting from sketches and studies made during a camping trip to Devon and Cornwall.
Oil on premium canvas
45 x 60cm
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
24 x 24 inches
Oil on triple primed panel
11 x 14 inches
Oil on triple primed panel
11 x 14 inches
Covehithe beach is in East Suffolk and I visited it on a glorious sunny day, the sky was deep blue and the sand golden. However, this painting is moment in time because this area suffers from the highest rate of erosion in the UK and next year the outline of the small sand cliffs it will be changed.
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
40cm x 60cm
To reach Covehithe beach, situated on Suffolk coast, I had to trek across fields and down an eroding cliff. However, I was rewarded by blue skies and an expanse of an almost empty sand beach.
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
40 x 60 cm
View of the unspoilt heathland and beach at National Trust Dunwich Heath, situated on Suffolk coast. Painted in the studio from sketches and studies.
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
40 x 60cm
Oil on canvas
600 x 800 mm
Sold
Oil on board
211 x 395 mm
Painted on a spring day at Mundlesey as the tide was coming in and just as the light changed. This warning of impending rain and encouraged people to depart and left me with a deserted beach.
Oil on premium canvas
40cm x 50cm
Oil on triple primed board
A quick oil study of Sea Palling beach. Apart from a few early risers, mostly dog walkers and fishermen, I had the beach to my self.
210mm x 300mm
Oil on handmade board, covered with Italian linen.
Quick oil sketch capturing the late morning light of autumn at Brancaster Beach.
18 x 24cm
I visited this Norfolk beach in autumn, arriving as the morning tide went out, revealing an expansive sandy beach and interspersed by pools of water. This painting was completed back in the studio from the plein air studies.
Oil on premium canvas
45cm x 60cm
Acrylic on birch ply panel
40 x 50 cm
Sold
Oil on canvas
After a stormy night camping at East Runton, I rushed out the following morning along the cliffs towards West Runton beach to capture the scene as the sea calmed and clouds gave way to a beautiful new day.
45 x 60 cm
Sold
Oil on triple primed board
A quick loose study of East Runton beach as dusk approached.
21cm x 30cm
Oil on board
Dramatic sky over Cape Cornwall. Painted alla prima using broad brush strokes and palette knives.
12 x 16.5 inches
Oil on canvas
A lovely morning walk along Gwithian beach, Cornwall as the tide goes out.
45 x 60 cm
Oil on board
For this painting, I used rapid and bold brush marks to capture the rock pools at Godrevy beach.
12 x 16.5 inches
Oil on canvas
I painted this in autumn, after a brisk morning walk along the beach, below the red and white striped sandstone cliffs at Hunstanton. Capturing a moment of the ever changing cliffs - constantly resculpted by erosion.
40cm x 50cm
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
I painted this oil painting in September after a camping and sketching trip to Hemsby.
40cm x 60cm
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
Oil painting along the Norfolk coast, depicting Heacham South Beach, during a mid morning walk in autumn. This painting is part of an ongoing series of paintings along the East Anglia coast.
40cm x 60cm
Oil on triple primed board
On a overcast and windy spring morning I decided to walk along the cliffs from West Runton to Sheringham. Along the way, I stopped to paint and sketch this scene near Beeston Regis.
12 x 16.5 inches
Oil on triple primed boards
I never tire of visiting and painting the Norfolk coastline and, once again, this late spring walk lifted my spirits.
12 x 16.5 inches
Sold
Acrylic on, sealed and triple primed, cradled birch ply board
I painted this after a lovely late morning walk from West Runton to Cromer. I was struck by the deep blue sky contrasted with the ochre sands.
24 x 24 inches
Sold
Oil on triple primed board
Quick oil study of autumn dawn at West Runton.
21cm x 30cm
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
I painted this seascape during a trip to South Devon after a lovely walk along the South West Coastal path.
40cm x 60cm
Oil on triple primed cradled birch plywood
This painting depicts the stunning Devon landscape along the South West Coast Path, looking back from just above Compass Cove towards Willow Cove. The path, I walked and documented from Stoke Fleming to Dartmouth, took me through National Trust land of cliffs and secluded coves.
40cm x 60cm
Oil on canvas
I painted this alla prima, using broad brush strokes and a palette knife to capture the stunning evening sunset as the tide came in.
45cm x 60 cm
Oil on triple primed board
Asmall oil study capturing the light on the sea.
21cm x 30cm
Oil on premium canvas
For this painting I wanted to capture the mass of colours and textures along the South West Coast Path, at Hell's Mouth, Cornwall.
45cm x 60 cm
Oil on canvas board
12 x 16 inches
Sold
Oil on linen board
24 x 30 cm
Oil on linen board
24 x 30 cm
Oil on canvas
16 x 20 inches
Cold wax and oil paint on cradled panel
40 x 50 cm
Oil on triple primed board
I painted this after a walk along a section of the Cleveland Way that took me along the cliffs and then down into Scarborough. I used broad brush strokes and a palette knife to capture the moody sea and sky.
12 x 16.5 inches
“One ends up with a landscape one has never seen before but it is presumably the landscape you were feeling as you started the painting.”
“Unless we use a tool we do not truly understand it and we learn by using.”
“The contemporary is the one whose eyes are struck by the beam of darkness that comes from his own time.”
“...the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”
“Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented [...] It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as “different.” ”
“Performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented [...] It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as “different.” ”
“When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.”
“I’m interested in playing with different platforms that aren’t really supposed to be in art, or be the art.”
“It is now not just important, but essential, that institutions stop marginalizing online or non-object-based practices.”
“That we are supposed to take care to recycle has almost reached the level of a duty or moral law, and this moral law circulates in the way we symbolize acts of consumption.”
“Disease ecologists believe that if we continue on this pathway, this year’s pandemic will not be a one-off event.”
“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”
“We need all kinds of artists. We have no need to destroy drawing. We lose so much. This wouldn't happen in music.”
“Like an apparition, something totally unforeseen, possibly lasting for just seconds, may spring from making a few brush strokes, establishing an area of truth which ‘might actually expand into a whole truth’.”
“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”
“When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work... it's saying I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.”
“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing.”
“I think that you have to be a bit one track to be an artist...”
“Many of my best subjects have resulted from looking back on past journeys.”
“I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.”
“…Every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting…”
“Painters must speak through paint, not through words.”
“The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.”
“It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work.”
“Every picture shows a spot with which the artist has fallen in love.”
“All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.”
“Listen to the advice of others, but follow only what you understand and can unite in your own feeling. Be firm, be meek, but follow your own convictions. It is better to be nothing than an echo of other painters.”
“The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.”
“Beauty in art is truth bathed in an impression received from nature. I am struck upon seeing a certain place. While I strive for conscientious imitation, I yet never for an instant lose the emotion that has taken hold of me.”
“Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.”
“Everything you can imagine is real.”
“Creativity takes courage.”
“Never lose the first impression which has moved you.”
“That is why, perhaps, all of us derive Pissarro. He had the good luck to be born in the West Indies, where he learned how to draw without a teacher. He told me all about it. In 1865 he was already cutting out black, bitumen, raw sienna and the ocher's. That's a fact. Never paint with anything but the three primary colours and their derivatives, he used to say me. Yes, he was the first Impressionist.”
“There is no must in art because art is free.”
“Painting is the most marvellous activity humans have invented.”
“There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it.”
“Reality is one part of art; feeling completes it...”
“You come to nature with all her theories, and she knocks them all flat.”
“In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them.”
“You must plan to be spontaneous.”
“What is art? We ought to very simply let it be what the artist says it is.”
© 2024 Ashley Baldwin-Smith
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