Crop:
A lone sealion, watchful as it emerges onto a beach, pausing to check for danger before entering a world where it lumbers rather than glides.
To me, it looks like a clean place to live, with bright air and clear waters, far enough away from the muddy boots of man to be called pristine. It doesn't really matter, but I am not sure if that is froth and sand or snow and ice. Either way it is somewhere I would feel clumsy and out of place.
Full image:
This is a great example of the variety of interest you can get from peeling paint. Some of it comes off in millimetre-thick layers, big and chunky, whilst elsewhere the same paint cracks and peels with such delicate finery producing intricate nets to entrap the eye. The weathering forces of heat, wind, water and possibly light working in strong but subtle combination to produce something that has a touch of infinite about it.
In this case, the underlying metallic base provides the foundation and that intrusive lump of rust the tension. It's tempting to try to force that rust into either being a looming whale or an extruding land-form but there's no need to be so definite. Just let it sit there, brown and rugged, representing nature in a generic not a specific way.
Here is the original photo oriented as it is on the fence and without the sealion.
It was taken from the top of this fence just left of the blue telegraph pole.
I have a vague idea to go back to this fence some time in the future and re-take some of the photos I have been using to make these artworks. Just to see how much they have changed. I probably need to wait a few years and hope that the fence is not repainted or torn down. Time-lapse video of the process would be fantastic but beyond my reach so I will probably just carry on enjoying my little discoveries of our weathered urban world wherever I go.
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