Capturing Newfoundland’s Essence: ‘Love on The Rock’

It was an early October morning, I rolled out of bed in my loft at the Pouch Cove Foundation, and stumbled sleepy eyed down unfinished wooden stairs in my wool socks, trying not to lose footing and slide to the bottom. Today my plan was to make it to Cape Bonavista Newfoundland, a four hour drive each way in one day, all to see an iconic east coast lighthouse and town, two peninsula’s up from my Pouch Cove studio. The gift of rising extra early on this day was a glimpse of a sunrise, in the first place to see the sun in North America. With foggy mornings and ever changing Autumn skies, thanks to constant wind gusts, the light changes rapidly in this place, which is wonderful for an artist who paints and take photographs. It also means you have to work and move quickly, and use your eyes and intuition to capture what may be delivered in any given minute.

Fast-forward to right now, the month of Love, February. I have been going over my photography and writings of the trip, and finding what speaks to me visually and in my heart. As this series of paintings about Newfoundland continues to grow and evolve, I am finding myself recalling the romance of the wind, rain, cliffs, waves and light. I am connecting to the feeling of the place, even though I am home on the west coast. Every day I walked the town and parts of the East Coast Trail, often crossing back through the cove and sitting above the Cove letting the wind rip through me, returning to my studio with crimson face, the kind where if you put your hand on your cheek it leaves a temporary white imprint of your fingers. More than a few times I got caught in a rain storm as the skies shifted quickly, but I LOVED IT. I wanted to get soaked, cold, salty and tingle. It feels like a clean slate, a new adventure, a fresh perspective, and these are all things I came to Newfoundland for, developing something new in my work.

‘Love on The Rock’: a journey of discovery, of connection, and of love

With this new painting I find I am expressing all these things, in a figurative landscape that includes floating rocks, which is something I have painted 3 times now since I began developing this series. Of all the great things that commanded my attention when I was in Pouch Cove, rocks were the number one draw for me, the variety, the colours, the shapes and how each beach I visited had distinctly different selections and colours. The Rock of The Rock is REMARKABLE.

This brings me to my new painting, titled ‘Love on The Rock’. For in the heart of Newfoundland’s wild embrace, amidst the silent symphony of rocks and waves, lies a love story waiting to be told—a story of love on The Rock.