75.5 cm (w) x 60.5 cm (h), oil paints on canvas.
Date produced: While living at West Beach, after my first exhibition (1984-1986)

This was painted on-site, at the end of Rockingham Street, at West Beach. With this painting, I am trying to express a beautiful, crisp, clear morning with cool fresh air, and warm sunlight.

“The magic of colour, with the richness of reality and presence; being able to see the infinite detail, and to feel the freedom which most of it exists within. A mixture of greens and yellows against expanses of pale blues. The mysterious distance of the horizon, and the blue water.

“Just to forget, and be born for the moment, to experience such a fresh and vital new world.”

This painting was worked on between 9 am and 10:30 am, on about 5 days of similar weather. With this painting I tried to exaggerate (a little) the amount of yellow I saw, in order to better express the feeling of the sun’s light and warmth. This was something I thought of doing after seeing the effect of a discoloured artwork reproduction. It is something that I found works well, something I do regularly in my paintings and pastels of scenes in the sun.

I wanted to indicate the cool morning air, so I provided a frame of pale blue-grey around the image of the scene. Some months afterwards, I felt that the painting needed a line of dark green added inside the pale blue-grey.