The sea is the great creator of life and the destroyer of both lives and land. We are drawn to the seashore and are in awe of the power and vastness of the oceans.
The five artists who have come together to form this group have joined the eddying current just for a moment before the rush of the waves separate them once more …
Each artist has felt the pull of the sea - of wild and rugged places. For centuries the oceans have been the subject of artists in the western tradition. The sea signifies the source of life and its destruction.
Each of these artists represents a more personal and introspective facet of that human response to the sea. In differing media they have expressed, and helped to reveal, the elemental truth of the ocean.
Hokusai is the elder of the group, and the most influential. He draws on a very different tradition. The islanders of Japan have always been aware of their debt to the sea in terms of trade and food. However the sea also represents a constant threat in the form of typhoons and tidal waves.
His work was viewed in the west as being the pattern for Japanese art representing its spirit and worldview. As we shall see, Hokusai is far too complex an artist to be placed in such a neat box. He became most well known for his superb woodcut prints - particularly the thirty six views of Mount Fuji. But he regarded himself primarily as a painter and, as he neared the end of his life, lamented that he did no have the time to perfect his skill.
Eileen Lewenstein is the inheritor of a strong British tradition in ceramics. She particularly reflects the tradition of the potter as artist begun by Bernhard Leach. She was also a passionate communicator and teacher - wanting to pass on, and help, deepen the practice of her fellow ceramicists as a founding member of Ceramics Today. Her later work reflects her fascination with the sea and the forms caused by erosion as well as the man-made response to the threat of the sea.
Maggi Hambling grew up on the Suffolk coast and loves its lowering intensity. She has a relationship with the sea and responds to it in a very personal and visceral way as can be seen in her sculpture and wave paintings.
Julie Brooks sculpture, film, and photographs come from immersing herself in wild and remote environments. She lived in a cliff arch on the island of Jura on and off for three years. She says of her work, “I see it as both a response to my environment, and the expression of the environment’s effect on me.”
Sian Williams' work is often washed away and unrecorded. It is an expression of the sea’s constant power to change and destroy. She works with sand and pebbles - always within the reach of the tide, so her art expresses the fleeting nature of experience.
This website is about a fictional collective, for educational purposes only.