Seascapes — oil painting by Ray Patrick
A long tidal reef below sandstone bluffs at low water, with small figures walking the flats in the middle distance and wet rock running toward the viewer.
A high viewpoint with the bluffs running away to the left and the reef opening across the whole foreground. The horizon sits high and the picture is almost entirely ground — the figures are a few millimetres high and set the scale.
Olive, khaki and dove through the wet flats, with the bluffs in ochre and umber. The water is a pale jade and the sky a thin cerulean — the whole panel is held in a narrow, overcast key.
Thick and square, the rock shelves laid as flat slabs with their reflections dragged beneath them. The figures are single dark touches, one of them carrying a fleck of vermilion.
Oil on canvas paper with an unpainted margin. Photographed on the studio table.
Lower right, raypatrick, scratched into the wet paint.