There are certain times of day that feel less like a moment and more like a threshold. Dusk is one of them. It arrives quietly, often without announcement, and yet it carries a distinct emotional weight. The light begins to soften, colours lose their certainty, and the world seems to pause just long enough for something unspoken to surface.
This painting was made from memory rather than direct observation. I was thinking about standing at the edge of the day, looking out towards the sea as it gathers itself into darker tones. At dusk, the water feels different. It becomes less descriptive and more presence-like, as though it is holding something rather than moving towards it. There is a sense of waiting, not impatient or expectant, but steady and patient.
The horizon in this work was never intended to be fixed. I allowed it to remain unsettled, shifting slightly as the painting developed, because that uncertainty felt important. Horizons often suggest clarity or direction, but here I wanted it to feel ambiguous, hovering between definition and dissolution. This mirrors the emotional space I associate with dusk, a time when decisions are suspended and nothing feels fully resolved.
I worked intuitively, building the surface in layers and allowing the darker band of water to gather slowly. Some areas were scraped back, others left thicker and more opaque. This process creates a surface that holds its own history, traces of what has been covered and what remains visible. For me, this reflects the way memory works, especially in coastal landscapes, where weather, tide and light constantly erase and redraw the scene.
Although the painting is coastal, it is not tied to a specific place. It carries fragments of many shorelines, remembered rather than mapped. The sea here acts almost as a witness, something constant and unhurried, holding moments that pass briefly along its edge. I am drawn to that idea of the sea as something that waits, that observes without interruption.
There is also an emotional quietness in this work. It is not about drama or movement, but about stillness and attention. About standing somewhere familiar and realising that something is ending, even if you cannot quite name what is beginning. Dusk offers that pause. A small, generous space where time loosens and the world feels momentarily suspended.
At dusk, the sea waited is less about depicting a coastline and more about capturing a shared experience, that inward moment of standing at the water’s edge, aware of change but not yet required to act on it. It is in that space, between day and night, that this painting lives.
