In the Studio: what I do with the seaweed

I bring a fair bit of seaweed home with me from swims.

I only take washed up seaweed; I don’t pick it while it’s still living. I find the different shapes and fragments irresistible, and just beautiful to draw.

Left out in the air, seaweed dries up. But one of its many magical qualities is that immersing it in water ‘reawakens’ it to its true, juicy, softly waving nature.

I keep a tray in the studio that I can fill with water and reconstitute any of my pieces of seaweed if I want to use their shape in a different way from how they’ve dried.

Seaweed, stones, and shells

Dried seaweed and paintings in progress

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