Lost Beach - Watercolours by Pat Stanley
Lost Beach - Watercolours by Pat Stanleythe paintingsthe storythe artistcontactlinks
Welcome to Lost Beach
 
Love Poem
Today the sand is blind, rootless, the horizon blurred seamless with mist.
Spiked triangles tilt white against the lake
A liquid funhouse floor - blue as green can be -
That slides and shudders as if in ecstasy.
Seagulls lift like spewed sea froth
Made weightless by longing for the moon,
A pale flurry of unformed intent.
As impatient air hollows out this brilliant
Faded day, I walk the beach
Filling the hole in my mind with
Fragments of ourselves I find
Etched in the restless join of land and water.
 
Duane Schermerhorn, 1982

In the fall of 2004 I began to paint Cobourg’s West Beach. I had had a serious medical scare in 2002, and during the next few years I spent many hours walking the West Beach thinking about my life.

I realized that there had been an overnight change in my vision of the future. The untamed surroundings of the beach calmed me and took me to a relaxed mental state where I could think more clearly. The natural world continues in an endless cycle of birth, change, and death – this concept seemed to allow me to accept what was to be for myself.

I started to create watercolours that seemed to draw from others the same feelings that I had when I walked on the beach – a serenity, a feeling of awe for the beauty of nature, and a vision of the endless future of the natural world.

In the spring of 2005 the first fence appeared on the beach. I was very upset at what felt like an invasion of an unspoiled space. I brought it to the attention of the local paper, the Cobourg Daily Star, where the story made the front page. Since that point in time there have been many stories, and many changes. I began to avoid walking on the beach, as it no longer made me feel relaxed, but upset and saddened. I did continue to paint the beach, but with one exception the paintings were based on old photos, or on areas far from the fence. One painting from that summer, “Fence”, expresses my anger.

This spring, the spring of 2006, there have been additional fences installed by property owners along the waterfront that inhibit access to many areas of the beach that I had previously painted. There is a boardwalk being built by the town, with the intent of protecting the natural habitat, but with the effect of further scarring the landscape. Everything has changed.

So I have returned to the beach and have started to paint it as it now is (but not without my anger). As with my own life, I realize that there has been an overnight change in the future of the beach as well. Maybe as I continue painting, I will learn to accept that future, as I am learning to accept my own.

  
 

 

 
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