#FridayPainting : Sunrise walk, Nantucket

We're a thousand miles from comfort, we have traveled land and sea
But as long as you are with me, there's no place I'd rather be
I would wait forever, exalted in the scene
As long as I am with you, my heart continues to beat

Excerpt from 'Rather Be' by the British band 'Clean Bandit' who compose electronic style music, ideal for painting along to in my studio!  The song 'Rather Be' was a UK chart topping single in 2014 in collaboration with the female singer Jess Glynne (another studio favourite!)....

Painting above : Sunrise beach walk, Nantucket Island from this year's show in Nantucket.

View all my Nantucket Paintings here.

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Waves of light .... ( the end of summer )

 light as an element

 a glittering atmosphere

 holding my camera aloft and photographing

 family, friends and kindred spirits

 moving in shimmer

 waves of light oscillating around shapes and over water

 dazzling fleeting frozen in time

a record of light for a painter to play with ....


Photos taken at Les Sables Blancs beach in Brittany, France

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The nature of love ....

I never knew where I was with her, or what sort of treatment to expect at her hands, and this was, I suspect, a large part of her attraction for me, such is the quixotic nature of love.  One day when we were walking along the beach at the water's edge searching after a particular kind of pink shell she needed to make a necklace she stopped suddenly and turned and, ignoring the bathers in the water and the picnickers on the sand, seized me by the shirt-front and pulled me to her and kissed me with such force that my upper lip was crushed against my front teeth and I tasted blood, and Myles, behind us, did his throaty chuckle.  In a moment she had pushed me away, in high disdain, it seemed, and was walking on, frowning, her eyes as before moving sharply along the waterline where the bland, packed sand greedily inhaled the outrun of each encroaching wave with a sucking sigh.

Excerpt from The Sea by John Banville

Photograph - this week on Les Sables Blancs beach in Brittany, France

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The Fringe of the Sea

We do not like to awaken
far from the fringe of the sea,
we who live upon small islands.

We like to rise up early,
quick in the agile mornings
and walk out only little distances
to look down at the water,
to know it is swaying near to us
with songs, and tides, and endless boatways,
and undulate patterns and moods.

We want to be able to saunter beside it
slowpaced in burning sunlight,
bare-armed, barefoot, bareheaded,
and to stoop down by the shallows
sifting the random water
between assaying fingers
like farmers do with soil,

and to think of turquoise mackerel
turning with consummate grace,
sleek and decorous
and elegant in high blue chambers.

We want to be able to walk out into it,
to work in it,
dive and swim and play in it,
to row and sail
and pilot over its sandless highways,
and to hear
its call and murmurs wherever we may be.

All who have lived upon small islands
want to sleep and awaken
close to the fringe of the sea.

By A.L. Hendriks

From Under the Moon and Over the Sea - A Collection of Caribbean Poems

Painting: Emerald Seas - Prints and Gallery Canvas Wraps handmade to order 

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My gallery by the beach ....

Wandering past a sad empty shop one Sunday afternoon, I saw a small scribbled note saying 'louer' .... Then in a puff of Gauloises, Monsieur Yannick turned up in a battered silver Hilux and we  had ourselves a deal ....

Et voilà!  (several tubs of white paint and lots of elbow grease later) ....a leisurely low-key gallery for the summer.

I've hung my favourite originals .... On the Shore and Life is Good (right) ....

and .... Surfer, Shadow, Surge of Water the long one (left) ....

and .... Surfer Off The Lip (you can order a print from PBTeen of Pottery Barn)

There's even an upstairs with hidden rooms and quirky corners for more paintings. Surfer Hibiscus Dream II (left).On Your Shore (top) and Only the Ocean (bottom).

As we talked the stars came out ... (left) Surfer Hibiscus Dream I (right) and Surfer Porthole (bottom) ....

Surfer and shells (left) Sun Kissed Sea (right) ....

Surfer, Red Beach .....

and Golden Surf .... 

It's a great little spot right next to Pors Ar Villec (Locquirec) surfing beach .... come down for a chat, if you get the chance xx

55 Rue De L'Eglise, Locquirec, Brittany.

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Holiday Memory

I remember the smell of the sea and seaweed, wet flesh, wet hair, wet bathing-dresses, the warm smell as of a rabbity field after rain, the smell of pop and splashed sunshades and toffee, the stable-and-straw smell of hot, tossed, tumbled, dug, and trodden sand, the swill-and-gaslamp smell of Saturday night, though the sun shone strong, from the bellying beer-tents, the smell of the vinegar on shelled cockles, winkle-smell, shrimp-smell, the dripping-oily backstreet winter-smell of chips in newspapers, the smell of ships from the sun-dazed docks round the corner of the sand-hills, the smell of the known and paddled-in sea moving, full of the drowned and herrings, out an away and beyond and further still towards the antipodes that hung their koala-bears and Maoris, kangaroos, and boomerangs, upside down over the backs of the stars.

Excerpt from Holiday Memory - Quite Early One Morning, by Dylan Thomas

Painting: Bright Day at Polzeath, Cornwall

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The day the tide went away ....

The day the tide went away ....


One day, in a town at the edge of the world, the tide went out and never returned.  The sea just left without warning.  At first, people were little more than puzzled.  They continued to gossip and fight over the same old things.  But soon a silence began to permeate the township.  A desert of unbelievable magnitude was forming before their very eyes.  Weeks passed and there was still no sign of the ocean.  The people grew worried.  It was decided to send a small group to search for it, in the hope of bringing it back.


As the days went on, more and more people went looking.  The people searched far and wide, but the ocean had vanished without a trace.  The quiet land, once bountiful, had become hard and unyielding.  Then a shape appeared on the horizon.  Through a blaze of heat, the people saw what looked like tumbling water rolling towards them.  A wave of excitement passed through the town, as they anxiously watched the ocean return.  But as it grew closer, the shape began to alter and mutate.  What looked like tumbling water, was in fact wild horses.  Everywhere they turned, they saw horses drawing closer and closer.  Their excitement turned to fear, and their fear became panic, for it seemed that nothing could stop their advance - which, as the ocean's disappearance, had come without warning.  But then no one, not even for a moment, had stopped to question why the ocean had left in the first place.


The people had no choice but to trust that the horses would lead them to their ocean. Without reins or saddles, they rode the horses across the barren land.  But the ocean had disappeared for good.  And the people, together, alone, had no choice but to face each other in their loss.  They made a home for themselves in a new environment, although one that had changed forever.  They learnt to live in the space the ocean had left - although it lingered in their dreams.

An excerpt from the film In My Father's Den


This week I sent a few of my art prints to Dunedin, New Zealand, including Coming back to the ocean, pictured.  I was reminded of the short story above, which was told as a voice-over in the film In My Father's Den.  Set in an isolated town in the South Island of New Zealand, the story is poetically spoken by the character Celia.  An intelligent sixteen year old with a passion for books, Celia is encouraged to write her own stories by a celebrated war photojournalist who returns to his childhood home to bury his father.  At the heart of the film is Paul's father's secret den, an entrancing dilapidated room packed with maps, books, LP records and obscure art.  Here Celia is encouraged to write and pursue her dream of leaving home .... and of travelling to Europe to sit in a cafe and watch the sea.

A haunting, many layered mystery with a gritty, authentic feel, written and directed by Brad McGann - based on the celebrated novel by Maurice Gee.  Here's a video link to the voice-over featuring clips from the film .... however, I recommend you watch the film first, and then read the book .... xx

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Red beach.

He just wanted to hear what I thought of the idea.  He intended to set up an office in Paris to handle that side of the business on the spot by dealing directly with the big companies and he wanted to know if I was prepared to go over there.  I'd be able to live in Paris and travel around for part of the year as well.  'You're a young man, and I imagine that sort of life must appeal to you'.  I said yes but really I didn't mind.  He then asked me if I wasn't interested in changing my life.  I replied that you could never change your life, that in any case one life was as good as another and that I wasn't at all dissatisfied with mine here.  He looked upset and told me that I always evaded the question and that I had no ambition, which was disastrous in the business world.  So I went back to work, I'd rather not have upset him, but I couldn't see any reason for changing my life.  Come to think of it, I wasn't unhappy.  When I was a student, I had plenty of that sort of ambition.  But when I had to give up my studies, I very soon realized that none of it really mattered.

Excerpt from The Outsider by Albert Camus.

Painting:  Surfer, Red Beach.

To live on some forgotten strip of sandy shore ....

We saw not a soul; we might have been alone in the world.  For a mile or two we went along close to the river bank and then all at once sky and sea opened before us and we crossed a broad reach and came in sight of a long, low, khaki-coloured shore.  I can see it, I can see it all, as clear as day, the white punt and that sunlit shoreline and the two of us there ....  It must have been a place where the river waters met the open sea, or perhaps it was something to do with the currents, or the tide was turning - I do not understand these things - but for a minute we were halted and held motionless on the unmoving water in the midst of a golden calm.  The burnished surface of the sea was high and heavy and smooth as metal, and a small, repeated wave gambolled like an otter along the margin of the shore.  The sun was hot.  Nothing happened. We just stayed there for that minute, poised between sea and sky, suspended somehow as if in air, no, not air, but some other, unearthly element, and it seemed to me I had never known such happiness, and never would again, though happiness is not the word, not the word at all.  That is where I would like to live, on some forgotten strip of sandy shore, with my back to the land, facing out into the limitless ocean.  That would be freedom, watching in solitude the days pass, marking the seasons, observing the spring tides and the autumn auroras, weathering the summer sun and the storms of winter.  Pure existence, pure existence and nothing else.

An excerpt from Ghosts by John Banville.  Each time I've moved house, a battered copy of this book kept coming to the top of the pile, eventually I read it .... and loved it, (.... although it is described as 'His funniest book ....' on the cover - I didn't find it remotely funny .... funny that).

Painting: Disappearing sun over Eigg, Arisaig, Scotland - Paintings of Scotland.

Imagine if you'd never seen the ocean ....

I'd get up early some Saturday mornings and drive south on Highway 17, push the Ford up the winding road through the mountains to Santa Cruz.  I would park by the old lighthouse and wait for sunrise, sit in my car and watch the fog rolling in from the sea.  In Afghanistan, I had only seen the ocean at the cinema.  Sitting in the dark next to Hassan, I had always wondered if it was true what I'd read, that sea air smelled like salt.  I used to tell Hassan that someday we'd walk on a strip of seaweed-strewn beach, sink our feet in the sand, and watch the water recede from our toes.  The first time I saw the Pacific, I almost cried.  It was as vast and blue as the oceans on the movie screens of my childhood.

An excerpt from the novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

Imagine if you'd never seen the ocean, can you imagine it?  Imagine if you'd never smelled sea air or walked barefoot on the sand.  Imagine if you'd never eased your feet in salt water or caught a rolling wave ....

This book is dedicated to the children of Afghanistan.

Painting: Breakers and Surfers, Constantine Bay, Cornwall from my website http://www.melaniemcdonald.co.uk/gallery_surfer-paintings.htm

The end of another summer.

It throws me off balance every year, the new faded morning light announcing winter.

Goodbye bright light and glorious dazzle.

Goodbye sweltering air that makes you want to flee to the shadows.

Watery sun like a consolation prize.

How does it make you feel .... when sharp edges become blurred outlines?

The end of another summer

.... what have I done since May?

Post inspired by Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier.

Ocean child.

ocean lover
born under the sign of the crab
there is magic in the sea
enjoy the waves
be free.

Hearts and bones.

My father held my hand.
We hadn't gotten far when he pointed to something in the sand. "A skull," he said, and there it was, a baby's. It looked like how I pictured a skull looking, just smaller. I was shocked. Then they were everywhere: down by the water, up past the sandbanks. Forty people, or a hundred - I couldn't tell. They edged toward the ocean, skull here, leg bone there, bleached and scattered, the bones of little girls and old men. Some had tumbled to the shore; some were still banked along the dunes at the top of the beach where they had been laid. They were very white. Tiny holes opened where insects and the wind had eaten through ....
All the way along that Niihau beach, picking up lobsters, stepping past bones, I had that sick-sweet feeling of wanting to open my eyes wider so that I could take everything in, and at the same time wanting to close them and run.

Except from West of Then by Tara Bray Smith 2004 ISBN 0-7432-3679-3 p. 180-181
Published by Simon & Schuster.


'..... forced to bury their dead in mass graves' is just one of the devastating sentences in the news this week, referring to the victims of the tsunami.

It reminded me of this excerpt in the memoir of Tara Bray Smith which is a haunting account of her life on Hawaii.

The time after the islands were discovered in 1778 by Cook is referred to as the 'Great Dying'. The European explorers introduced diseases such as smallpox, measles and influenza to Hawaii. An estimated 400,000 Hawaiian people, (based on a visual count by one of Cook's men), plunged precipitously to 40,000 in a few decades.


Beach paintings by Melanie McDonald www.melaniemcdonald.com

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Fistral Beach, Cornwall. BLUE.

She suddenly reminded me of 'Tangled up in Blue'. That old Dylan song. The tall thin lady with her intense look and two beautiful children. It's New Year's Eve. I've met her before at the beach in the summer. Embroidered flowers on her jeans. Memories of razor shells, seaweed and a lesson in marine biology. A lover of animals. She's brought along a slim glossy black puppy and her children with musical names. And she's talking about the feeling of blue. A glass of wine in her hand, at the old pine table with friends all around. 200 meters of it underneath you and 40 meters above. Hanging from a rope somewhere in the middle of the ocean. With a camera and a big stick in case of sharks. We were all hanging there with her. Infinite everlasting Atlantic blue. And only odd worries about dropping the camera or stick. Hanging off the end of her rope, she reminded me of a different point of view. Like the song.

Other posts you might like:
Camusdarach or paradise.
Paintings Polzeath, Cornwall.
Painting featured: Fistral Beach Scene, Cornwall.

Fistral Beach, Newquay, Cornwall - Freedom across oceans and skies...

I haven't been on a train for years. Blur of porous celtic sky streaking past. 'Yeah, shot down', said a voice. Louder than he meant to. Above the thrum or nerves perhaps. Glimpse iphone touching pink ear touching cloud of window. Obscured by nasty royal blue velour. Uncut strawberry blond hair, freckled hand like a small boy's. 'Yeah, just out, pumped full of morphine'. Touching a scar like a habit. New pink in blond hair. 'Lost me tail, yeah, can't remember, just shrapnel coming towards me'. Friendship bracelet. 'Had to rebuild me leg, teach me to walk again'. Film of blue green landscape rushing past like life. 'Offered me honorable discharge but I'm going back up'. Up into the impermeable blue of a foreign sky, flying faster than the speed of sound in a supersonic fighter jet. 'Then I'm going to uni'. Next stop Cornwall. Place of surf, safe blue skies and soundless good byes.

Other posts you might like:
Surfer Research
Surfer Paintings, from this to that.

Painting featured: Fistral Beach, Newquay, Cornwall - Freedom across oceans and skies...

On the shore. Polzeath, Cornwall.

'I just need to stand on a beach somewhere', she said. She'd called me on Skype. I can see her face. It still gets me every time. 'I love London, but .... well, you know what I mean ....'. She looks me in the eye. I know. I was born in London. Soft leather soles hitting hard heavy pavements. In Marylebone, above an antique shop. The people who live in London walk the furthest of any city I've heard. Leaden streets, soft soles of feet .... I know what she means. Fine sand between my toes. Bodies crowd the cities as the soles of their feet yearn for the sea.

Other posts you might like:
Surfer Paintings - from this to that.
Surfer paintings at Polzeath, Cornwall.

Painting featured: On the shore, Polzeath, Cornwall.

Golden Sands, near Rock, Cornwall.

'Perhaps to her grey thoughtful eyes revealed an arch gaiety sometimes; but this was infrequent; the sort of wisdom which looked from their pupils did not readily keep company with these lighter moods. Like all people who have known rough times, lightheartedness seemed to her too irrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly. She felt none of those ups and downs of spirit which beset so many people without cause; never - to paraphrase a recent poet - never a gloom in Elizabeth-Jane's soul but she well knew how it came there; and her present cheerfulness was fairly proportionate to her solid guarantees of the same.'

Description of Elizabeth-Jane from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy.

Ocean Girls.

Ocean Girls.

Easter thoughts .......

Live simply that others might simply live.

Quote: Elizabeth Ann Seton