The rain, taps on the conservatory roof, the dog stands in the doorway, looking out, and shaking before her paw has stepped into the river on the patio. Warm, damp….it is encouraging weeds to shoot up through my broad beans, the slugs return to the daylight hours. Did I suggest, sat there in the sticky heat…..that a bit of rain would be nice. I had forgotten that the rain gods over Swansea don’t understand ‘a bit’. It is all….or nothing. The breakfast weather assures me the sun will be back out soon. Does she know Swansea has it’s own rain generating clouds. The first thing you buy when you move to Swansea is a good set of waterproofs…..and you find hobbies you can continue in the rain…

Painting outdoors becomes a game of chance with the rain gods. Having found the spot that inspires you, you take out you paints, gently squeeze out a range of colours into the china pallet……the water pot you balance on a flat bit of ground close by. Looking ahead you absorb the colour, the sunlight, the movement, the energy of the moment….then selecting a large flat brush you spread water across the blank white ready for the wet paint to hit is and spread. Perfect….. looking down you change brushes, and dip a long slender brush into the blue to begin. A quick look up to connect the view with the first mark….Bam!….a large rain cloud has suddenly teleported and kidnapped the view…..It is now a race to paint it….. before it soaks you, and washes away the image of itself.

This is Swansea. I have a number of paintings like this from my ‘to hell with the rain, lets go out and draw!’…….. and of course it rained….the long master piece becomes a quick impression, with the odd drop of rain included

It captures Swansea….the nature of the place, how we live by the weather, how we get used to the rain. This sketch says it all, and it is from a time before the Tower of Doom arrived, and the other tall buildings that are beginning to sprout like my weeds, in the rain.

I have always enjoyed that you can stand in Swansea and not feel hemmed in by towering structures, that the hills that cup the place are visible….but times are changing, and it is probably better to build taller structures, on brownfield sites. As the population grows…..people need places to live, starter places, places closer to work, closer to there social life so they don’t need cars….I hope the plan it well, looking towards better living, not huge profits…..maybe they will finally be able to develop paving, that once the sand underneath washes away collect lakes of rain water that attack you when you step in them…

But when the sun does come out here there is no better place to be.