I painted this while on a weekend retreat at Point Samson at the start of the month. I painted without a palette because I had thoughtlessly left it at home. It put me in a mild panic when I realised what I had done, until I decided to embrace the freedom of being paletteless and paint on regardless. So I applied paint directly to the canvas - in sparing amounts so as not to overwhelm the tiny canvas, and mixed paint wet on wet and in the tops of lids. Do you know I surprised myself. The white at the horizon line glows, and the graduation of colour through the water is seemingly seamless. I also did a small pen sketch of the beacon before I painted it, which I will try to include an image of.
Can I just say how wonderful it was to walk away from everything for an hour or more and listen to...other peoples children, the silence, the sounds of the beach. how wonderful it was to sit and think about nothing more than how to apply paint to canvas in order to resemble something of what I could see before me. Selfish and self indulgent and wonderful. I started 'plein air' painting when I returned to university, and I hated it. My canvases were too large for what I was trying to achieve and usually took between 6-8hours. Obviously within that time planets revolve and shadows move, so what you begin painting in the morning would often no longer be there by the afternoon.
That exercise did make me pay more attention to colour and shape and shadows. A heightened awareness of my surrounding environment you might say. I remember catching the train to uni one morning. After a week of gloomy Melbourne winter skies a sliver of sun appeared. "Oh, wow, look at that shadow. Oh-my-God it's a shadow, Oh-my-God the sun!" But I noticed the shadow first. Now I paint on postcard size canvases that I can hold in one hand. They take roughly an hour, which is long enough to sit and focus on one aspect of the landscape without loosing interest or shadows. And I love it. I am hoping to do some more 'plein air' paintings before I leave Port Hedland, but it is my desire to return to the Pilbara without children or husband and spend a week in the desert painting...sigh.
