Seascapes — oil painting by Ray Patrick
A small oil of surf breaking round black reef below an olive bluff, seen from above, lying on a sheet of graphite head studies.
Seen steeply from above with no sky at all. The bluff runs as a band across the top, the water cuts in on a diagonal from the right, and the black rock masses close the left — the picture is a set of interlocking shapes rather than a view.
Olive and khaki in the bluff against turquoise and cobalt water, with the rock and shadow in near-black. The surf is a hard chalk white and the only light in the panel.
Knife-laid and square, the colour scraped on in flat slabs with hard ridges at the ends of the strokes. The surf is dragged across the dark rock in two decisive pulls and left.
Oil on canvas paper with an unpainted margin. A studio photograph lying on a sheet of graphite drawings, which are separate works.
Lower left, raypatrick, scratched into the wet paint.