This means business

At last!

Jan 21, 2024

I stepped into the studio yesterday. Not for some random errand or other but as my artist self. The sun was shining, I’d put the heater on and I had my brew in hand.

Warmth, light and mess!

It had become a bit of a dumping ground so a tidy up was needed even before I could reach for my paints. Sketch books and journals, collage material and ephemera, gauzy tissue paper and a Lancashire Wildlife Trust magazine. Never mind boxes and packaging that I am determined to save. . . just in case!

I pick up my Japanese style apron and put it over my head. This means business!

I’d forgotten

Finally with a clear desk I lay out the series of paintings I started in the lead up to Christmas. It’s been so long I’ve forgotten what they look like. My first impression is underwhelming. I am not convinced. But these are the initial layers and there are many more to come yet. There are some areas that I hesitate over

- hmmm I really like this bit and that - lovely marks where the paint has mingled - water marks changing the paint surface - areas of light translucency.

But it is too soon. Too soon to get attached.

Aldeburgh

In October I visited an exhibition from 3 Instagram friends in Aldeburgh. It was my first time to this pretty town despite having lived my first 33 years in Suffolk.

I know this coast well though. Wide pebbly beaches, sea foam surging up onto stones in long stretches that reach for miles. The clang of bells in buoys farther out in the swell. Sharp winds that bite when coming from the east. My Dad was a sailor you see and I sailed with him a lot in my younger days.

Stranded

On the beach at Aldeburgh are 2 large clinker dinghies, sat there,

stranded.

Grounded and looking out to sea. One facing into the easterlies and the other south. Slowly these boats are disintegrating, bit by bit they will return to the sea, to the place they belong.

Proper boats so my Dad would call them. Picture by Susan Mills

I sat there sketching the boats. Dark brooding skies told of a storm out to sea. Sheltered behind The South Lookout from the brisk winds that had whipped up, I felt peace.

I felt connected to my dad in someway that is inexplicable. We had never been to Aldeburgh together and to my knowledge it isn’t somewhere he used to come.

Something in the air

But there was something in the air; being swept up onto the beach amongst the ebb and flow of the foam on tide; above my head in the cries of the gulls circling around; in the dark foreboding skies. And in those boats. I felt my Dad in those boats. He had been a boat builder from age 14 and to my Dad, a boat wasn’t a boat unless it was a wooden boat. He also happened to restore antique furniture, but that’s a story for another day.

DUST Disintegrate. Sketch. Sea foam. Boats. Pictures by Susan Mills

I could feel my Dad in this place, looking onto those crumbling boats. It occurred to me, the inevitability of life, how we return to dust. There was something so comforting in that thought. I felt my Dad in the ether. I felt my Dad in my heart. It filled me with a quiet, knowing peace.

And so my series is inspired by Aldeburgh and by the sea and by dust. Not in a dark sad way but in peace. In light. In love.