I have a propensity to paint water. It plays a big part in my life having grown up by the sea, being a cold water swimmer and living in the middle of the Norfolk Broads. Our house is on a small bump in the land, which can hardly be called a hill, flanked by the Bure on both sides which has expansive Broads branching off. For many years I was scared of painting water or the sea as I wasn’t sure I could do it justice. But in recent years it has become a particular challenge I really enjoy and I am drawn to paint floods for my climate project.
As I thumb through articles from around the world flooding seems to be the major problem, one of the most common I am realising. Rising sea levels and violent storms invade coastlines, flood valleys and low lying areas, almost always where the poorest reside. My dilemma is which to document and I have to consider how to paint a particular image. Some of the things I see are devastating but wouldn’t translate int paint very well. And there lies a guilt. What am I doing this for if I’m not telling the whole picture and instead reducing these disasters into subject matter? A white, lower middle class woman sitting in her garden studio painting a flooded shanty town feels pretty grim.
I didn’t expect a lot of the questions I have to face. Maybe there will be some kind of criticism once I have completed this of the position am I standing in looking on my mac at photos of poverty and trauma for my painting project. But it is the only language I know and I have to do something other than recycling yoghurt pots.
This flood painting was taken from the aftermath of Cyclone Ada in Mozambique from a report online and I was taken with the two women wading through the flood water.