If you’re a wild swimmer, or a sea swimmer, or simply someone who loves the beach, you have probably dreamed of this. Or, if you are lucky, you have already experienced it. There’s nothing like it: the sense of being alone on a beautiful beach, walking slowly into water warm enough to bathe in, preparing to float with your ears underwater, deaf to all modern-day distractions.

Sometimes, the freedom is in our own heads - we just need to find it.

15cm x 20cm, oil on cradled board, unframed

By the way, this board sailed on Cesarina from Ramsgate in 2021, down the coast of France, Spain and Portugal, to the Canaries and then the Cape Verdes and across the Atlantic. It visited Grenada and almost every island on the way up to Antigua where it crossed the Atlantic again the other way and arrived safe and sound in Southampton. I have used it for this collection because I know that it is itself imbued with the spirit of freedom and infinite possibility.