I first painted at Titchwell Marsh in 1978, accompanied by the booming of a bittern hidden somewhere in the reeds. When I visited last month, it was the lonely piping of the oystercatcher that greeted me. It was one of those days when there were subjects everywhere, and I hardly knew where to start. Like a little bird trying to decided where to build its nest, I went from this spot to that and back again. I spent a lot of time just looking, taking it all in, mentally editing. Mooching up and down, settling on 'angles'. Below me, the waders were doing their own mooching, probing the nutrient-rich mud with knitting pin beaks, and leaving a web of wandering trails behind them. At length, this is the subject I settled on, looking East across the brackish lagoon: People tend to write off mud as brown, but it really isn't. This mud reflected the silvery light, with a diaphanous shimmer of pinkish and violet greys. The swathes were incised by snaking ribbons of water. And that island of reeds in the middle distance - if there was a bittern secreted down there today, it was keeping 'mum'. The only movement was the constant mooching of the waders. You'll notice I haven't painted them in. People do comment, 'You never paint the waders in, why?' Because at this scale they'd be nothing but a peppering of full stops and commas. The light, the mud, the reed bed and the blue-green distance were enough for me. And that haunting call of the oystercatcher followed me home. This subject was painted on 1/4 Royal Wookey Hole 140lb rough paper. This and other subjects of Titchwell can be viewed on the Watercolour Page under Landscape and Marine.
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Judith Key
Judith Key is a Norfolk based artist, working in watercolour and pastel. She has exhibited with the Society of Graphic Fine Artists and New English Art Club at the Mall Galleries, London. Her paintings are in collections worldwide. Categories
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May 2018
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