The inspiration for the Wild Swim painting collection

Each of my collections is an opportunity for me to express my experience of a particular aspect of living by the sea - a chapter in a larger story if you like.

From the serenity of rock pools to the soaring of birds in flight, there are so many ways to immerse in coastal life.

For me the most meaningful, most exhilarating, and what feels most like coming home, is sea swimming.

Living in England, that means it’s usually ‘cold water swimming’, to put it mildly! I swim less in the winter months but do try to get in when I can {lockdown and temperatures depending}. I resist quite a bit, but I never regret it. And I always come home and make some of my best work after a swim.

The Underwater Garden collection came about from the discoveries I made swimming off the rocks locally - such a magnificent secret world beneath the surface!

This new collection is more about the experience of swimming in cold water.

My aim has been to infuse each painting with the nameless, wordless feeling of it - the cold shock of entering the water, the gasps for breath as you immerse, the exhilarating feeling of being vibrantly alive that the cold gives, the zingy, humming feeling you carry through the day after a swim.

A couple of works in progress from the Wild Swim collection

It’s certainly not for everyone! And I’m a lot wimpier than many who swim daily year round. My hope is that the paintings offer a sense of the experience even if you can’t get to the sea, or simply wouldn’t dream of getting in outside of summer months!

The Wild Swim paintings will be available next week - if you’d like to have advance access before they go public, sign up below and I’ll email you the link before I share it more widely online.