Cornish Blue Oil

Cornish Blue (High Summer in Cornwall)
Oil on gessoed board.

I've always been chasing that blue. Not the blue of a polite English summer afternoon — but the blue you get in August when the heat has been building for days and the sky goes a shade deeper than it seems possible. Real but almost too deep to believe.

I started with that feeling. A heat-haze shimmering day that's completely still, completely full. The sand is warm underfoot — I feel it in the texture. The water does what Cornish water does in that light: goes almost impossibly deep, while the edge catches white and bright at the distant sand-bar.

John Millar showed me you could commit fully to a colour and let it carry everything. I tried to do that here. The blue is the subject. The beach gives you a perfect place to stand.