Painting Holkham Beach and the North Norfolk Coast
Holkham is one of those places that feels much bigger than it ever seems to in photographs.
The beach opens out for miles, with huge stretches of sand, dunes, distant sea and an equally big sky above it all. On my last visit I climbed up into the dunes, walked the shoreline and spent time in and around the drifts of sand and marram grass, taking in the scale of it and watching the light shift.
I had my camera with me rather than my paints, and filmed a slow pan from the top of the dunes. What struck me most was how little the view needed. There were no dramatic landmarks or obvious focal points, just the broad shapes of the dunes, open sand, distant water and that huge sky.
Big skies over Holkham
That feeling of openness fed directly into the large painting, 'Big Skies, Holkham'.
I didn’t want to overwork the painting or describe every part of the beach. The sky needed to do most of the work, with the dunes and shoreline sitting lower in the composition and giving just enough structure to everything else.
Holkham also changes very quickly depending on the weather. The clouds, light on the sand and colour of the sea can completely alter the feel of the place, even within a fairly short space of time.
The dunes and open sand
The dunes are probably the part I keep coming back to most when I look through my photographs and clips from that day.
From higher up they break the beach into these simple shapes and strips of colour, which is something I am increasingly drawn to in my painting. I aim to simplify and suggest, rather than describe everything too literally, and use larger areas of colour and more confident marks to suggest grasses, sand and shadow.
That was also behind some of the smaller Holkham studies, where I was less interested in copying a particular view and more interested in keeping the atmosphere of the place.
A quieter side of Holkham
Early Light, Holkham came from a different side of the same landscape. Here the sky is much quieter and the dunes, particularly the play of cool shadows against warm glowing sand, take centre stage.
Compared with Big Skies, Holkham, which is really about the scale and drama of the sky, this one became much more about the shapes in the land and that slightly hazy, early-day atmosphere, drawing you through the grasses and out onto the flat beach.
It can be said of most places that the feel changes depending on the light, weather, time of year and other factors, but I think it is particularly true of coastal areas, where there is such obvious exposure to the elements and reflected light all around.
If you like these pieces and the North Norfolk coast, Big Skies, Holkham is also available as one of my small fine art prints.
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