I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside
Series Statement –
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I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside is a body of work that began after I collected seagrass from a beach with the intention of making handmade paper — only to find it was polluted with sewage. That moment of realisation, of surface beauty hiding environmental collapse, stayed with me. It marked the start of this series.
The works are rooted in memory, observation, and satire. They take imagery from childhood holidays, seaside postcards, fish-and-chip nostalgia — and filter it through a lens of discomfort, absurdity and ecological concern. The figures are distorted, the colours lurid, the humour often uneasy.
Some paintings explore the failure of emotional connection (Black Flowers), others show grotesque scenes of polluted play (Slumgullion), while others stage surreal spectacles (Rising Tide, with its skeletal horse-headed figure, draws on the Welsh Mari Lwyd tradition). Together, they speak to the contradictions of the British coast: a place of retreat, ritual, ruin and residue.
This is an ongoing series, currently being developed for exhibition.
Black Flowers 84x59cm oil and pastel on paper was created in response to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2025 theme Dialogues, and explores the complex, often broken forms of communication between people, and between humanity and nature. The work depicts two ambiguous figures mid-exchange, offering blackened, lifeless flowers—gestures of care that feel hollow or uncertain.
.Giving the Kippers a Steam
The title relates to a phrase I often heard in childhood when my uncles took off their socks, rolled up their trouser legs and paddled in the the shallows on the beach.
In my version the beach is awash with the bodies of dead birds and litter.
Darkly comic and visually layered, this piece blends absurd humour with a sharp critique of cultural ritual and human absurdity.
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Giving the Kippers a Steam 84x59cm oil and pastel on paper
Beach Mambo
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An image based on experiencing first hand, and witnessing others running the gauntlet of of walking along a beach strewn with detritus.
A surreal, joyfully awkward dance scene. Bold movement and off-kilter postures hint at nostalgia mixed with discomfort — the absurd choreography of beach rituals.
Beach Mambo 84x59cm oil and pastel on paper
Sun Cream
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A darkly satirical imagining of a world that is heating up uncontrollably. In what might be a commonplace scene on many beaches, a mother prepares to apply sunblock to her child. the question is whether it is too little too late. Are the dying birds an omen of worse things to come?
Sun Cream 84x59 oil and pastel on paper
Slumgullion
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In Slumgullion, I present a grotesquely playful beach scene. Two children spill a bucket of sludgy, polluted goo, surrounded by fish bones and plastic-like detritus. The title—slumgullion—an old term for a cheap, messy stew, captures both the literal and symbolic spillage of innocence into toxicity.
Referencing the classic British seaside postcard again, I try to subvert that light-hearted tradition with something darker. The colours are bold, the mood disturbing, and the tension between surface joy and hidden decay is ever-present. It’s a satire of nostalgia, where childhood play mixes with the reality of environmental ruin.
Slumgullion 84x59cm oil and pastel on paper
Rising Tide
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A central figure lounges by the water, beer in hand, wearing a skeletal horse’s head—a striking reference to the Welsh Mari Lwyd tradition. Around them: surreal beachgoers, scattered waste, ghostly limbs beneath the water. The painting explores themes of ritual, climate anxiety, and denial, all staged in the guise of a sunny day out.
Painted in vivid oils, Rising Tide captures a theatre of cheerful avoidance—vacation as performance. The rising sea becomes not just a literal threat, but a metaphor for the things we pretend not to see.
Rising Tide 122x91cm oil on canvas
Sunblock
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I am often struck by the amount of litter that you can see scattered along beaches, I chose to include this thought as a background to a painting dealing with the effects of over exposure to sunlight on the skin.
Bold and sun-bleached, this painting brings warmth, grotesque colour and an ambiguous human presence. A dreamlike take on the body and seaside exposure.
Sunblock 122x91cm oil on canvas
Dead Fish
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Having found the remains of a fish tangled in fishing line, washed up on a beach, I wanted to create a blunt and moving environmental image. The fish lies lifeless in the sand, its form stylised and symbolic — a moment of stillness hopefully charged with ecological meaning.
Dead Fish 85x60cm oil pastel on card
Donkey
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Surrounded by dead and dying birds we have a skeletal donkey and his owner and a seemingly oblivious beachgoer. This image is an attempt to convey my anger and sadness at finding dead birds on one of my beach walks a while ago. I've attempted to include echoes of traditional beach rides and childhood memory, rendered with unsettling energy. The donkey stands both as a symbol and a character, humble and quietly surreal.
Donkey 84x59cm oil and pastel on paper
Mother Earth Mourns the Death of the Birds
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Follows on from Donkey, the previous image. During an outbreak of avian flu, I found several skeletal remains of geese near and straddling a path along the seafront. I produced this piece in response to what I had found. The sombre colours are intended to emphasise the emotional effect that finding the carcasses had on me.
