Brignogan Plages - extraordinary and magical rocks

'There's the Ram and Lamb,' said Billy, pointing at two rocks just beyond the narrows. The water swilled over them.

'I like it,' said Quoyle, 'that the rocks have names.  There's one down off Quoyle's Point - '

'Oh, ay, the Comb.'
'That's it, a jagged rock with points sticking up.'

'Twelve points onto that rock.  Or used to be.  Was named after the old style of brimstone matches.  They used to come in combs, all one piece along the bottom, twelve to a comb.  You'd break one off.  Sulfur stink.  They called them stinkers - a comb of stinkers.  Quoyle's Point got quite a few known sunkers and rocks.  There's the Tea Buns, a whole plateful of little scrapers half a fathom under the water, off to the north of the Comb.  Right out the end of the point there's Komatik-Dog.  You come on it just right it looks for all the world like a big sled dog settin' on the water, his head up, looking around. They used to say he was waiting for a wreck, that'd he'd come to life and swim out and swallow up the poor drowning people.'

Excerpt from The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

These are photos of some of the rocks on Brignogan Plages in remote northwest Brittany near where I live.  Do these extraordinary rock formations have names, I wonder?  The story is that this is a wreckers' coast,  Breton sailors must have known and named them ....  Great pilings of rock upon rock, created by Nature, formed by the forces of water and wind.  These strange and excessive rocks are like prehistoric animals or megaliths ....  

Tell us your names ....

My name for the rock above is 'La Baleine de Peintre' ....

P.S. The famous English surrealist Eileen Agar, named this rock 'Bum Thumb', when she took this photo in Ploumanach in 1936, (another place in Brittany famous for its rocks).

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St. Michael's Mount, built by giants ....

My daughter was reading aloud from a big book called Giants, which I bought in 1979 when I was about her age.  A lavish book with strange and wondrous illustrations, she told the story of the giants Cormoran and Cormelian ....

St Michael's Mount, a rocky islet near Marazion in Cornwall was reputedly built by the giant Cormoran and his wife Cormelian, both natives of Cornwall.  It seems that centuries ago Mount's Bay was a stretch of densely forested dry land.  In the cool darkness of the woods lived these two giants.  One day it occured to Cormoran and Cormelian that it would be a sage notion to build a stronghold to protect themselves from attack.  (It is not known exactly whom or what they feared.)  So they set to work building a mighty edifice of white granite.

Now Cormoran was a rather lazy giant by nature and at one point, when his wife was not looking, he settled down for a short nap.  Soon Cormelian noticed her husband sunk in peaceful slumber.  Cunningly she decided to collect the odd greenstone rock rather than white granite as this entailed a shorter journey.  But, as she lugged her first greenstone along in her apron, Cormoran awoke to catch his wife red-handed.  Angrily he aimed a hefty kick at Cormelian.  Her apron strings snapped with a mighty twang and the rock she was carrying tumbled to the ground where it has remained to this day, forming the causeway leading to St. Michael's Mount.

Excerpt from the the book Giants, fabulous tales of folklore and fables Giants 1979 Rufus Pulications Inc - (out of print, I believe, but collector's editions available).

p.s. a few other interesting snippets I've researched about St. Michael's Mount ....

The skeleton of an 8ft tall man was found in the 14th Century, his 9ft tomb is cut into the rock near the Chapel's altar.
Cormoran means Blackberry Giant in Cornish language and Cormelian means Clover Giant.
Carreg Luz en Kuz, the Cornish for St. Micheal's Mount means 'grey rock in the woods'.
Cornish giants had 6 toes and 6 fingers.
A fossilized hazel wood dating back to 1700 BC is below the sea of Mount's Bay.
Marazion is believed to be the oldest town in Cornwall, perhaps in Western Europe.
The Archangel Saint Michael appeard in 495 AD and was seen by local fisherman.
There is another St. Michael's Mount off the coast of north France.
St. Michael's Mount was used as the castle in Dracula, in the 1979 film, and also appears in the 2013 film Mariah Mundi and the Midas Box scheduled for release soon. (One to watch out for!)

p.p.s this painting is called First day of Spring, St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall .... enjoy xx

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Atlantic Girl rider

A ghost-girl-rider.  And though, toil-tried,
He withers daily,
Time touches her not,
But she still rides gaily
In his rapt thought
On that shagged and shaly
Atlantic spot.
And as when first eyed
Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.

Excerpt from The Phantom Horsewoman by Thomas Hardy from Sounds Good - 101 Poems to be Heard edited by Christopher Reid

Inspiration is everywhere.  I noted this poem last year.  It reminded me of a girl rider at St.Michael's Mount who I mused over for a while.  Written during the time Hardy was haunted by his first wife Emma, soon after her sudden death; it reflects upon happy times spent in Cornwall where they first met.  This poem is about memory and the power of imagination.  It contrasts the gritty physical world and (in this case) the carefree illusion of the spiritual world.  St. Michael's Mount is an apt symbol for the passing of time.  Nostalgia and the merging of past and present .... the interplay of life, art and words .... feeding one another, connecting and giving meaning to ..... Inspiration is everywhere.

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Commission paintings of Cornwall

Commission paintings depend upon trust and connection between you and me.  Let's create a personal painting .... heartfelt and unique .... a reflection of your imagination and the artist's eye.  It could be an evocative beach, a depiction of your family or childhood remembered.  Here are some images of recent commission paintings of Cornwall.

 Daughters at Treyarnon Beach Cornwall

 Walking near the Iron Bridge at Padstow Cornwall

Family walk Camel Estuary Cornwall


If you're looking for a painting of a special beach featuring your family, do let me know and I'll be happy to chat with you about it .....


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Finistère, ancient custom's houses and Sylvia Plath

Customs House, Meneham, Brignogan, Finistère

Over the last few weeks I've been out and about in Finistère, remote north west Brittany. I stumbled upon these ancient Maisons des Douaniers crouching vigilantly behind titanic granite boulders, overlooking the turbulent Atlantic.  The story is that this part of Finistère is a wreckers' coast.  These Custom's Houses, a snapshot of history, are set into the rugged coastline.  They put me in mind of Sylvia Plath's haunting poem, Finisterre - This was the land's end: the last fingers, knuckled and rheumatic .... Her poem, written in 1961 shortly before her death, is disturbing and bleak.  It relates to the memory of a holiday in Brittany, where the wild landscape of this place resonated with her disturbed state of mind.  In it she acknowledges history, war, death and the supernatural in the form of mists, rocks and stormy seas.

Finisterre by Sylvia Plath (an excerpt)

This was the land's end: the last fingers, knuckled and rheumatic,

Cramped on nothing.  Black
Admonitory cliffs, and the sea exploding
With no bottom, or anything on the other side of it,
Whitened by faces of the drowned.
Now it is only gloomy, a dump of rocks -
Leftover soldiers from old, messy wars.
The sea cannons into their ear, but they don't budge.
Other rocks hide their grudges under the water.

The cliffs are edged with trefoils, stars and bells
Such as fingers might embroider, close to death,
Almost too small for the mists to bother with.
The mists are part of the ancient paraphernalia -
Souls, rolled in the doom-noise of the sea.
They bruise the rocks out of existence, then resurrect them.
They go up without hope, like sighs.
I walk among them, and they stuff my mouth with cotton.
When they free me, I am beaded with tears.

Kerfissien at Cléder in north Finistère

Pointe de Primel, Plougasnou in north Finistère



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Shadows and Reflections

It's the time of year when the sun hangs low in the sky and figures cast long thin shadows over the land.  For me, it's a special time of year for taking photographs ....

 Capturing moments with striking effects of light, shadow and reflection.

 Sometimes the photographs feel a bit like memory itself .... shimmering and grainy ....

 Paintings emerge slowly, created with many layers over many hours.

Pictures to be discovered slowly, parts put together to make a whole.  To be touched, wondered over and loved for a hundred years to come.


Painting top - Shadows and Reflections - Golden Evening II
Painting above - Shadows and Reflections - Golden Evening I

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