I was born and grew up in the shires, the River Severn flows through them sculpting the landscape. It has always pulled me towards it, as it did my ansestors, who lived and worked alongside it. There is a story passed down of one who drowned in its dark waters at Ironbridge…..but he river has been been kind to me, even though I have watched its inky waters rise many times.

The origin of this painting happened on a car trip in 1991… it marked a turning point, although at the time I stood looking out at the waters sliding past I had no idea that this is what it was.

Life had not given me calm waters…the fracture of a relationship left me wandering. Lost I had given up on the creative arts….and wedged myself into the a round hole as a technician in a Birmingham Nursing College. Hard work, promotion, home ownership brought secure loneliness. Life felt like it was pulling my heart out bit by it, and I had no idea how to stop it.

One evening in 1991 after the rain had stopped, a friend phoned me to ask did I want to take a ride to see the flood. We found ourselves staring at the hills, across the flooded seven. The silence, the peace, the water, and a brief memory of an art teacher showing me how to paint the Malverns purple, made the need to paint bubble up again. Not just the moving flood waters, but the lost innocence of nights spent on those hills watching the light from Worcestershire twinkle. All the hope and dreams of all that could be….at that moment I needed to find my way back to being happy. I took a single photo to remind me…and as the waters became inky and the night air chilled, I pushed the cheap camera into my pocket with a single image waiting to be developed.

It took a couple of years before I managed to find the time and courage to paint that view. When the water-colour sold, the empty space brought the realization that the image was important to me, it had reminded me that the deep blues of life can be climbed out from. Peace and fulfillment are out there, and for me painting was a pathway.

In 2009 I finally found the time to do a second version of the picture, mixing an old grainy faded photo, and the memory of the water-colour with the emotions of the moment and subsequent years…. This painting, the second version, expresses the peace, the coming of change. It is from a time before, and each time I look at it it gives back a little of the magic