October Storm - Oil on Board

Because the West Country marches directly out into the Atlantic, flanking the stormy Bay of Biscay to the south, it is the first land to receive the gales that roll in from the ocean at this time of the year. A sea gale crashing upon these western shores is a sight to behold. The winds are rarely destructive but can gust to speeds that blow people over, and occasionally waves swell to heights that send deep water sweeping over the sea walls. Since storm rollers coming in from the southwest have a fetch extending to the Caribbean, or the northern part of South America, they sometimes reach unexpected magnitudes..
So not every path is safe. Many beaches in the West Country get considerably rearranged during the winter months and then somehow resume their accustomed appearance by early summer. In both Devon and Cornwall the south-westerly storms used to be a great menace to ships of sail, driving them onto the lee shore, and even in recent times, despite all the advantages of turbine-power and satellite navigation, an object as large as a container ship can arrive upon the rocks and beaches of this region, courtesy of the high seas. The coastguards and lifeboats of the West Country are busy every year.
Inland where everything is being buffeted it is not difficult to imagine that you can hear the pounding of the sea on the shore, or catch a taste of salt spray riding the rushing winds, and nearer the coast these imaginings are realities. Here in this picture the viewer stands on a steep slope rising from one of the many inlets that pierce the region, overlooking the estuary and onwards to the sea. The storms bring deluges of heavy rain, the ditches, streams and rivers fill, and I wanted to evoke the eager sound of water flowing fast over rocks as a brook races down the hill, and the sound of the wind whipping through the trees, plucking leaves, shaking the gorse, and beating down the heather as it blows the clouds into shipwreck on the hilltops.
Because it is October, there is still gold in the sky when the sun breaks through, and grandeur on the seas where the light falls. When the clouds part the storm has an eye, a centre around which the swirling atmosphere urgently revolves, and a circle is completed, so that wet rock and earth and tree and sky kiss each other in drenched abandon. I wanted to suggest the exhilaration (when well clad!) of walking the high hills in pouring rain, with the wind shoving hard on one side, clean from the sea, and soaring views ahead and limbs keen as the air is eager. So, to capture the speed of the clouds and the shaking of the grass and trees I used a palette knife in rapid sweeps, and the edge of it in staccato stabs, sometimes plucking, sometimes smoothing, always mingling the colours into the wind.
Even in this age when ploughmen turn a field over in an hour while shut into the cabin of a tractor, head clamped under headphones conveying radio music and chatter, and even though the industrial world extends its clutter and control to every crevice of the landscape, still a storm seems to brush aside the human artificiality, as snow blankets it. Now, as the wind exults in its freedom, singing wild songs from the furthest seas, and the storm roars contempt for the little space of shelter thrown up by our tiny homes, nature resumes her dignity. We understand afresh that there are some things we must not take for granted.

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