Sheds and Lobster Pots
Audio description
Medium
Pen, gouache and watercolour on paper
Date:
2010
Dimensions
H 30cm x W 72cm
Project/Commissioned by:
Creative Landscapes, English Heritage/Accentuate Residency, Hastings.
Exhibited
Coastal Currents House of Hastings
Dada South/Accentuate Upstream Showcase Brighton Festival.
Sale status
1 version sold. Private collection
Links to other web pages
www.sallybooth.co.uk/CreativeLandscapes/index.html
Contact link for sale and commission
www.sallybooth.co.uk/contact.html
Full description
This picture is an A3 double spread sketchbook painting in long landscape format.
Sally stood at the back of the beach behind The Stade to make this painting of a shed-like building and collection of lobster pots.
Each fisherman in the Hastings Fleet has his own designated area on the beach to keep his nets, lobster pots and ropes, fishing tackle, and various pieces of machinery. Often accompanied by customised flat roof sheds or outbuildings, these areas stretch out like an array of allotment plots in long, multi-coloured strips along the back of the beach behind the boats.
This picture depicts one of these plots. Taking up most of the foreground of the left hand side of the picture is a rickety rectangular flat roofed wooden shed, which sits on a green grassy area at the edge of the beach. Clumpy tufts of grass it stands on can be made out around the bottom edges of the hut, and this adds to the sense of incongruous feeling of being on some form of allotment and close to the sea at the same time.
Behind and above the shed on the far left, the top of East Hill Cliffs can just be seen in the distance, indicated by fine spare outline and painted with a greeny turquoise wash of watercolour. In front, Sally was sitting near the right hand corner of the shed, so the viewer can see two sides of the building, slightly at an angle. The shed tilts slightly to the left.
The longest side of this shed facing us looms large as it is so close up. It is painted in a very dark wash of watercolour, and is a mixture of umber browns with a greenish tinge and also a dark, watery, rusty red almost bleeding in on the bottom right hand side. On top of this wash, Sally has added horizontal black lines with a wet brush to indicate the wooden structure and these are soft edged and irregular because the paint underneath was also still wet.
Tucked just under the shed's flat roof and slightly off centre is a reinforced wired glass window. There is a round hole in the top right of the window. It is either broken, or this is perhaps some form of basic ventilation system.
The other side of the shed to the right is foreshortened and side on. There are two windows, painted blue where the glass would be, and something propped up against the side - either a section of decking or of corrugated roof.
The right hand side of the picture is almost entirely taken up by a tall pile of lobster pots stacked up high and multi-coloured, like children's building blocks. The tallest of these stacks is on the left, towering over the shed next to it and probably over 8 feet high. The pots are mostly like open cubes and are stacked precariously at different heights and angles, making a colourful pattern of squares and some rectangles across the paper. The pots' outlines are picked out in red, green, blue and yellow, with dots, blotches and daubs of coloured paint.
The open criss-cross string or nylon mesh of the pots is drawn in fine black lines or washes of green watercolour. Many pots seem to have broken netting and some clearly show the circular opening designed for the lobster to go in. The pile looks crooked and untidy.
On the far end of this wall of multi - coloured pots on the right are some unusual shaped pots. A dirty yellow triangular one tips on its side, and a blue, semi-circular pot with a flat bottom sits on top of the pile with a distinct lean to the right. Another green pot next to it seems to lurch out of the end of the picture, and we get the sense that this pile just carries on past where the image finishes.
Behind the open structure of the collection of pots can just be seen a very wobbly black horizon line and above it a patch of white sky. But this is dominated by a sweep of very ominous looking dark cloud appearing from behind the top right hand corner of the shed. It is moving across the top of the picture towards the right like a plume of smoke. The clouds are painted with a murky watery wash of greeny grey and look full of rain to come.
