Ravilious & The Seasalter Trilogy

“Dangerous Work At Low Tide” - Eric Ravilious, 1940

I have long been an admirer of Eric Ravilious; his designer’s eye for composition matched to that shimmering watercolour technique has imprinted a visual document of the Kent and Sussex landscapes I know so well.

During the Second World War Ravilious was one of the first artists appointed by the War Artists Advisory Committee and took up a commission in Chatham at the naval barracks HMS Pembroke. This period of his life is of particular interest to me and has become woven into the narrative of recent work.

An ink drawing of my Ravilious amalgam character

The trigger for this interest was a literal and metaphorical change of perspective. As a member of the Print Block my working practice was often based in the harbour at Whitstable, tucked away behind the Brett Aggregates works. When the Print Block’s Suki Hayes-Watkins moved the studio to a farm overlooking the Seasalter Levels the novelty of an almost endless horizon was magnetic.

The view from the farm: marshland; the Swale Estuary to the left, with Sheppey behind; the Thames Estuary; on a clear day, Essex. I spent hours staring at this view, great container vessels navigating the channels, the weather rolling in, the sea sometimes dark grey, sometimes sparkling blue, and bright yellow at low tide.

The view sparked a memory of a Ravilious watercolour from 1940 - “Dangerous Work At Low Tide.” A shimmering, striking image and a clue as to how to cope with this giant panorama. At the time of this painting the artist was stationed at the dockyard in Sheerness and on this day he accompanied a bomb disposal team further down the coast as they sought to defuse a magnetic mine at Whitstable. Presented with a bizarre but terrible weapon Ravilious painted a scene of stunning beauty where the war seems almost incidental.

By absorbing the story of Ravilious’ time in North Kent I was able to weave a new narrative of a person who was instead deeply unsettled by the discovery of a bizarre object in the sea. Set on Seasalter beach and the Red Sands forts the three prints that make up this trilogy feature a Ravilious-esque character, dressed in period tweed, accompanied by soldiers and facing an unknown fate. Unlike the men in “Dangerous Work At Low Tide” these protagonists are unnerved and doubting in their own bravery.

The Seasalter Trilogy by Alex Lee