On The Rocks

The Cape coastline is not placid, but wild, moody and dramatic. My aim in these paintings was to capture the Cape coastline in all its roiling rhythmic force.

I began frequenting a rocky patch shoreline near my home in False Bay because of the shapes and frothy breaks produced by its irregular crags and outcrops. While it is a sad miniature in comparison, this scene reminded me of paintings I had seen of Belle Île en Mer, the home of John Russel, visited by Monet, Matisse, Moret, Glaser, Maufra and Van Gogh. These painters were not so much concerned with painting seascapes per se as they were with the challenges of capturing motion, rhythm. mood and light in their Belle Ile paintings. I used my own tiny Belle Ile as a playground to explore the same concerns. I have also been deeply influenced by the seascapes of George Bellows. While he is better known for his fight scenes and social realist city paintings, George Bellows produced extraordinarily powerful paintings of the Maine coastline. His seascapes are as muscular and bristling as his paintings of boxers. Inspired by these painters who used rocky shorelines as an excuse to play with mood and motion, the paintings presented here are attempts to depict the sound and fury of a coastline in motion.