‘Rain over Walland Marsh’, 2020, 20x30 inches, oil, charcoal and coffee grounds on canvas.

Romney Marsh, especially the newest Walland Marsh section, is a checkerboard of fields and drains. The courses of a few brooks meander from the low cliffs of the Weald or the North Downs to the sea walls but ordinarily the drains are as straight as possible. A fine example of the industrial use of this landscape. This artwork was initiated in the autumn of 2019 and built through several iterations and layers until the finished piece emerged literally from the dust in late winter 2020. When rain washes across Walland Marsh it is a particularly harsh environment. All too quickly you can find yourself soaked through with little shelter within sight, never mind within easy reach. Here you see such a shelter in a sparse distant line of trees but the ‘sewers’, as the drainage ditches are often called, form an impenetrable block. In summer they are at least a couple of metres deep with another half metre of water at the bottom, but in winter they are full to the brim, impassable with weeds and skeletal rushes.