The Unknown

Oil on Canvas. 120cm x 120cm x 36mm depth.

The sea has always fascinated me, but it has also frightened me.

​

There is something deeply unsettling about looking out across the water and knowing that beneath the surface is something vast and completely beyond your control. The sea can be calm and beautiful one moment, then become violent, powerful and dangerous the next. Yet despite that, we are endlessly drawn towards it.

Some of that fear goes back to my childhood. We travelled to Ireland quite often, taking the ferry from Fishguard to Rosslare. I remember being violently sick from the movement of the boat, and I can still remember the feeling of watching those huge waves move around us. Even now, there is something about the ferocity and unpredictability of the sea that makes me uneasy.

​

This painting is my attempt to explore that feeling: the fear of the unknown, the overwhelming power of nature, and our complete inability to control it.

But in painting the sea, I think I am also trying to make peace with that fear. To study it, confront it and live with it, rather than turn away from it.

​

The sea is beautiful. The sea is terrifying. And perhaps that contradiction is exactly what keeps drawing us back to it.