LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND

LIGHTHOUSE ISLAND

Original artwork 2026, acrylic on canvas 600mm x 400mm.

Both lighthouses and islands have always fascinated me. I love Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse in Nova Scotia, or Danish lighthouses on the Baltic islands. What is it about being cut off, maybe in a small cottage on a Scottish island, perhaps the Orkneys of the Hebrides, awaiting the weekly boat for supplies from Orban? And what if the boat is storm-bound and it’s necessary to eke out the last of the mouldy bread? Through the spindrift and the gloom, the ferryboat spies the lighthouse light, and you’re saved. But islands can also be tropical, with coconuts to drink and munch on, snapper to catch, and Great White sharks to avoid. Islands are everywhere, the Caribbean, the Seychelles, but all in their own way have a certain magic. What about lighthouse keepers keeping their lonely vigil on isolated rocks? When I was a young lad, in my romantic way of thinking, I was dreamily taken with thoughts of being a keeper and tending the light in violent storms. In this painting, the lighthouse is part of a small community with sailing boats being swept past on the flood tide. Perhaps the crews and the keepers wave at each other. Are the Robinson Crusoe island people thinking of a seafaring life of adventure, and the sailors having fanciful notions of settling down with a family?  The real Robinson Crusoe, the man who inspired Danial Defoe’s tale, Alexander Selkirk, was abandoned from 1704 to 1709, on the Pacific Island of Juan Fernandes, South Pacific, off the coast of modern-day Chile. But that’s another story.