Hideaway

my latest painting…. “Hideaway” – Woodpecker Bay, West Coast, oil on canvas, 20 x 40cm

Woodpecker Bay is one of my favourite places. One I’ve painted many times, from on the beach or above it. The raw elemental nature of the coastal rainforest and limestone bluffs enveloping the rock strewn shore, with wild surf and bracing sea winds beckoning you to hideaway. To feel the solitude of the wildness and let it work its magic on your soul….

This quote, from Wendell Berry in his book “The Unsettling of America” gets to the heart of it;

“We need places that we do not use at all. We need the experience of leaving something alone. We need places that we forbear to change, or influence by our presence, or impose on even by our understanding; places that we accept as influence upon us, not the other way around, that we enter with the sense of pleasure, of having nothing to do there…”

…..Woodpecker Bay is one of those places, the perfect place to hideaway!

you can see more of my paintings at: http://www.ianhamlin.co.nz