Christopher Jessop's picture gallery – also, his Journal
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Crystal Rollers
Painted in high summer, quite a few years ago. When the water is gin-clear and tall waves are coming in to break with a tumble close to the shore, the sea takes on such a glassy look, in each luminous moment before that crashing collapse turns all to snow-bright foam. The sound is distinct at such a time, too: especially crisp, it seems, carrying well inland on the breeze.
Oil on canvas
Private collection
Our talk poster featuring the wonderful Peregrine Falcon sketch by Paschalis Dougalis is on display around the village; we are hoping for a good turn-out tomorrow evening.
Here’s the poster at the start of the footpath down to Musselwick Sands…
Let’s zoom in on the headland, Towers Point: you can see why people call it the Rhino’s Nose!
Now let’s concentrate on a detail in the sketch and, allowing for some artistic licence plus the state of the tide, enjoy a moment of serendipity…
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Marloes Sands greetings card
This card used to sell well in the Village Stores. It is now on sale again, at Runwayskiln Café; hopefully it will prove equally popular. The original picture is now in a private collection, i.e. someone bought it! I painted it on location in early autumn 2017; the back of the card features a photo of the finished picture on my easel, on the spot. I was lucky to have calm weather for each painting session; mind you, that’s a relative term at such a position.
Oil on panel
16” x 24”
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Reluctant Sun
Shortly after I sketched “The Red Costume”, in rolled quite dense clouds. Later that day, the sun was briefly showing; that inspired this sketch. I was remembering childhood beach visits when Mum didn’t want us to go in the sea because, our accommodation being pretty basic, she worried about not being able to dry our rinsed towels and costumes. So the deal would be, ‘You can swim if the sun comes out.’ And, of course, any faint glimpse of brightness up there and one of my sea-keen sisters would be racing towards the ocean!
Pencil, graphite stick, coloured pencils, and Conté pencil
Size A4
From my imagination
I am experimenting with posting entries in the style of hand-written postcards. See below images for a text version.
Small amounts of poster tack bedded between the picture edge and the frame suffice to keep everything in place during assembly.
This is the painting I have donated to be one of the two prizes for the annual church fête picture raffle. It will soon be going on display at Runwayskiln Café, Marloes Sands: they will be selling raffle tickets through June and July. The raffle will be drawn during the fête at St Brides Castle, Thursday August 7th, opening at 6 pm.
This is my standard framing style, using reclaimed timber – not beachcombed, as it happens, but planed down from cedar cladding ex an old shed. The top and bottom rails are cut from longer runs; it takes time to work out the best arrangement, so that knots and/or nail holes do not distract the onlooker.
Yesterday’s drizzly grey sky cleared in time for the afternoon low tide. You don’t spurn such opportunities – so, to Musselwick Sands for a swim. As I was walking back along the beach, from a large family group having great fun in the waves came one girl, who sat herself at the sea’s edge…
I don’t normally try doing fast sketches in full colour, but luckily I had the wherewithal: such a wonderful contrast, with the bay’s blues and greens so strong thanks to the air having been recently rain-washed.
She wasn’t there long, looking out to sea; you can see from the marks how I hurried. I think the cropped composition is best – although with that red catching the eye so, one might manage a painting with the figure small in a great expanse of beach.
The title works nicely in Welsh: Gwisg Goch
Conté, coloured pencil, & pencil
A4 paper
I meant to feature this a few weeks ago, but instead I added some new sketches; now, the trees shown (which have grown much larger because this painting goes back at least 10 years) have set their fruit. But it’s a picture I like because I think I captured the feel of the day quite well, so here you are…
Oil on panel 12″ x 10″
Breaking from gardening tasks this sunny afternoon, down to Musselwick Sands for a low tide swim. A team of children were working very hard on sea defences; of course, the rising water was going to defeat them. As the waves started to seriously attack, the older siblings began piling sand even more furiously; but littlest one decided that they’d be most use scooping water up from the castle walls, and racing out into surf to indignantly fling it as far as they could. Talk about hard work!
The first image is the full scan; I thought I’d include a cropped version which has more punch…?
Various pencils, fine biro, some scratching out
The next Marloes Village Hall talk will be about the birds of our Peninsula. Wanting the poster to be striking but not too fussy, I searched the web for a drawing of a Peregrine Falcon – one of our most impressive local birds, along with gannets and ravens.
This picture below stood out straight away; what amazed me when I studied it more carefully was that the background view is of Towers Point, a headland on the Saint Bride’s Bay coast about a mile from my house.
Amazed me even more, on discovering that this is the work of Paschalis Dougalis, a Greek artist living in Munich! Such an odd combination of circumstances, it makes me wonder if my server incorporates an Infinite Improbability Drive.
Anyway, I am very grateful to Mr Dougalis for his permission to incorporate the illustration in our poster; I do recommend you to visit his website and see how very good his work is for yourselves. Here’s the link…
Having written this piece for our local newsletter, Peninsula Papers, I thought I would share it – with some minor edits.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that one cannot step into the same river twice: it’s never the same river, and you won’t be the same person. Similarly one cannot visit the same beach twice, because each tide changes things. The late May sand levels at Musselwick (Marloes) have been very high because of offshore winds; furthermore swimmers are finding it shingly underfoot, even rocky in places.
Lumpy Beach Syndrome has been reported here before: from a friend’s archives comes a Western Mail front page article of June 11th 1984 headed Riddle of vanishing holiday sands baffles the experts. The photo shows Steve Marsden, then proprietor of Marloes Post Office (which was in The Square) surrounded by stones, his backdrop that unmistakeable black cliff. The Mail had consulted Prof D Q Bowen (Aberystwyth University) about the situation – which was however different 41 years ago, for then the general Musselwick beach level was very low and there were reports of “lost sand” from locations all across Wales and England.
Normality will probably return with a weather change; but, it’s well to be reminded that Nature is good at surprises. While summer visitors struggle to picture No Beach Syndrome, we year-round shore explorers have witnessed on different occasions Musselwick, Albion, Marloes, and West Dale completely scoured to the bedrock – and then, sometimes only a day later, everything back as before!
