I feel at home on the marshes.  As a child I often wondered how Pip had felt as he stumbled across Magwitch in the cold mists.

At first glance, they can seem bleak, particularly in winter. Autumn offers some warmth and the reds and pinks of the samphire, whilst winter colours are muted.  The air begins to bit and the landscape feels exposed. Yet within that exposure there is a quiet, restorative calm. A place where unnecessary noise slips away.

The marshes are never still. Their form shifts constantly, carved through by water and shaped by tides. Their surfaces open, fold, and reform. Over time, I began to see them not just as landscapes, but as bodies.

The creeks and channels, those deep cuts and wykes hint at something corporeal; reminding me of muscle, of sinew, of the inner structures that hold us together. A landscape with an anatomy.

My own relationship with my body changed profoundly after cancer surgery in 2024. It altered how I see form, strength, and vulnerability. What might once have been perceived as damage, I now understand as evidence of survival, of endurance, of healing.

In the marshes, I see that same language. The land reshapes itself, adapts, continues.

Painting these works has been an act of recognition as much as observation. A way of understanding both the landscape and myself through the same lens of change and resilience.

There is great joy in that process. In translating something raw and elemental onto a canvas. In finding beauty not despite the marks, but because of them.  May we all learn to love our scars