Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

People often ask me how my sunset paintings sit alongside my ocean work.

On the surface, they can look like two different worlds, waves and shorelines on one hand, skies on fire on the other. But for me, they are inseparable. They come from the same place, the same rhythm, the same deep pull toward moments that make time slow down.

I spend a huge amount of my life on the beach. From sunrise through to sunset, it’s where I feel most myself. Any moment by the sea is powerful, but there is something profoundly grounding about being there as the sky begins to change - when soft pinks turn to gold, when the sun either rises from or disappears into the horizon line of the ocean.

Those moments stop me in my tracks. Every time.

A full moon. A sunrise. A sunset. They all carry that same quiet magic - a reminder that the world is bigger, slower, and more beautiful than whatever is filling our heads that day. When the sky starts to glow and reflect across the water, it feels like time briefly stands still. That’s the feeling I chase in my work.

The beach has always been my place of solace. I didn’t grow up in Cornwall - I’m a city girl - so holidays here were everything to me as a child. Those trips to the coast weren’t just breaks from normal life; they were moments of freedom, joy, and deep calm. The beach was my happy place long before it became my home.

Me on the beach on a Cornwall holiday with my Dad

When I eventually moved to Cornwall, that feeling didn’t fade. If anything, it deepened. Even now, whenever I’m on the beach, my inner child is right there with me - beaming, grounded, utterly content. Add a jaw-dropping sky, one of those evenings where the horizon looks like a watercolour painting set on fire, and I’m in heaven.

That’s where my sunset paintings come from.

They’re not a departure from my ocean work - they’re an extension of it. The sea and the sky are in constant conversation, and my practice lives in that space between the two. Sunset pieces allow me to stretch creatively: to explore colour more freely, to play with warmth and softness, to let texture and pigment move in a different way. But the intention is the same. Connection. Stillness. Memory.

That feeling of standing on the shoreline, breathing deeper without even realising you needed to.

‘Held By The Horizon’

My ocean paintings often focus on movement, power, and depth. My sunsets hold a quieter energy - reflective, expansive, gently emotional. Together, they tell a fuller story of the coastline I love so deeply and the moments I return to again and again for grounding and peace.

Every piece I create, whether it’s a wave breaking or a sky glowing, is rooted in the same desire: to bottle a moment that made me feel something, and to offer that feeling to someone else.

Because sometimes, all it takes is a horizon line and a sky on fire to remind us exactly where we’re meant to be.

Gem

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