Sailing · 2025
A red lighthouse standing alone offshore, the sea and sky around it kept pale and cold.
This piece is part of my collection. Originals will soon be available to buy online — write to me in the meantime.
The subject
This one is invented — no particular coast, no name on any chart — a red tower standing alone in a rising sea. It is the idea of a lighthouse rather than the portrait of one.
Offshore lighthouses are among the bravest things people have ever built: towers set on a bare rock or a sandbank far from land, to be kept lit through storms, with the waves breaking over the lantern. From Eddystone to the rock-lights of Brittany, they carry a romance nothing else at sea quite has.
I wanted that feeling — the small red tower, the water heaving around it, the sheer stubbornness of a light that will not go out — without tying it to any real place.
So the sea does most of the work, and the lighthouse simply refuses to be moved.
Not a real lighthouse but the idea of one — a small red defiance in a big cold sea.
Ink draws the tower and the broken water; the colour is kept to a bold red and a cold blue, splashed and let run.
It is a little picture about holding on — which is, in the end, what a lighthouse is for.
See also · Sailing A Classic Wooden Sloop under Sail · The Elegance of a Classic Wooden Sailing Boat · Sailing Sensations