This is one of four pieces in the exhibition painted during Storms Ingrid, Goretti and Chandra in February 2026. After a long pause from painting, I was drawn back to the coast by wild, churned-up seas that carried me straight back to the North Atlantic edge of my childhood.

These storms made national news after damaging the coastline, shifting sand through the estuary, carving a deeper channel and destroying the end of my local pier. I drove onto the point, opened the side of the van as partial shelter, and worked on paper just metres from the breakwater as thirty-foot waves exploded vertically into the air. Every so often a car would appear in the gloomy light, headlights on, people watching from the warmth and safety inside, while I stood drenched in salt spray, pinning paper down with my boot and throwing diluted colour into the wind. The paper buckled, lashed and crumpled, but survived, carrying the marks of wind, rain, salt water and force. Around me, hundreds of seagulls hovered almost motionless in the storm winds, playing in the currents of air as silver breaks of light hit the roaring foam.