North Sea Coast - A J Kinroy's Portfolio

1. Tarlair by moonlight. A wrecked outdoor pool facing the North Sea.....imagine it by moonlight, imagine its ghostly past

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

2. Fraserburgh. The trawlers are vast in Fraserburgh harbour, but not in the North Sea

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

3. Fife Ness. Fife Ness lighthouse sits at the end of the land; the North Carr Beacon lies a mile and a half out to sea

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

4. Seal Sands. Men and lurchers. It’s been going on for centuries, and probably longer. This group was at Seal Sands, near Hartlepool

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

5. Spurn Point. A back-backed gull soars above Spurn Point at the mouth of the River Humber.

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

Atlantic Wall. The sinister wreckage of Nazi coastal defences can still be seen on the North Sea coast

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

6. Marvin in Ostend. Marvin Gaye walked on Ostend beach. He lived in the town for eighteen months before his death

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

7. Terschelling diner. On Terschelling island an American diner sits above a rainswept beach. Put a coin in the jukebox: Since my baby left me/ I found a new place to dwell/ down at the end of Lonely Street…..

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

8. Ijmuiden beach cafe. Near Ijmuiden bathers enjoy themselves next to the petro-chemical works. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

9. Off Stavanger. You can’t quite see the turbines from Stavanger, but you can feel the energy. Press a switch to be connected to the North Sea.

Limited edition colour linocut print - image size 15.5 x 20.5 cms paper size 27.5 x 32.5 cms.

You couldn’t go anywhere in the first lockdown in 2020, not even to the end of the street. So we dreamed of journeys instead – in my case, places on the North Sea coast I’d seen, or would like to see. Mist and rain, greys and Prussian blues, fog, sandbanks, the cry of seagulls, foghorns, the sound of waves crashing on the shore, the feel of the wind, ships and turbines..... sometimes cerulean and azure blues, rocky shores, gannets, sparkling seas and beach cafes. And petro-chemical works. North Sea Spirit by Benjamin Walker and Knee-Deep in the North Sea by The Portico Quartet suited my mood. I cut the blocks for this series while sitting at the kitchen table.

I thought of the abandoned Art Deco outdoor pool at Tarlair north of Aberdeen. It faces north, set in a cove beneath dark cliffs - it must have been cold swimming there. It’s an architectural precursor of the white concrete lighthouse above the rocks at Fife Ness. And there is brutalism on the North Sea shore. The Nazis’ huge concrete defences ran through France and the Low Countries to Scandinavia, and some of its forbidding wreckage remains today. Parts of the Atlantic Wall were strangely architectonic; it's claimed that their aesthetic influenced post-war Brutalist architecture.

I would like to see Ostend, with its James Ensor and Léon Spilliaert connections and from where, improbably, Marvin Gaye rebuilt his career in the last eighteen months of his life. I imagined sailing high above the Humber and out to sea, there to see trawlers, wind turbines and oil platforms. When I thought of petro-chemical works I remembered men in camo jackets exercising their dogs at Seal Sands, and people in swimsuits near Ijmuiden. It’s not always swimwear at the Dutch beach cafes, though. I looked out from a shack, while Elvis sang, at rain and fog on the beach. The shack - called Heartbreak Hotel - is an American diner on the North Sea island of Terschelling. Who wouldn’t dream of that?

A J Kinroy artist printmaker