This piece was painted from a sea kayak in the Kingsbridge Estuary, after what had already felt like a full and satisfying day of work. I was heading home when the movement of current, ripples, cloud and light became too beautiful to leave behind.

I dropped anchor in the shallow mudflats and painted from the kayak, surrounded by water and the gentle instability of the tide. Later, as I drove inland, I discovered that large storms had been building beyond the South Hams, although the peninsula itself had avoided their full impact. So this is a storm painting from the outside, looking in: sunlight around me, brooding clouds gathering in the distance. Working from the kayak gave me access to a quieter, less reachable world, where I saw wildlife including foxes at the tide’s edge. There was also a little fear in it, because a gust had already capsized me earlier that day, and I had to wait for the tide to drop before recovering most of my kit from the riverbed. That slight rocking, that awareness of water beneath and around me, became part of the fluidity of the piece.