I was thrilled to find these fascinating forms on the beach. They made me imagine the elongated tentacles of squids reaching out from the sea, jagged bolts of lightning, contours from a map and static from a television. These sand markings are so beautifully intricate it is incredible to think they were made by the movement of the sea.
They reminded me of a process that artist Peter Doig described using in one of his works. In; ‘Man dressed as Bat’, 2007, he described how some of the marks had been made by rain coming into the studio. Peter allowed the painting to get wet and used paint in a fluid way to allow for an ephemeral quality to develop in the painting. I think this method is a fascinating description of the nature of painting. It can be a process of controlling what cannot be controlled. Sometimes mistakes or unintentional results can be beautiful.
Stephen Feather art blog 