Mike Bernard
Further images
Description
Land's End, Cornwall is a coastal landscape looking out over a stretch of cliffs and open sea, with a headland running down to the water on the left and rising ground closing the view on the right. The cliffs are worked in ochre, green, grey and dark red, with a natural arch or gap breaking the rock face on the left, and gulls marked in white line across a blue sky. The sea fills the lower and central part of the composition in bands of deep and lighter blue, broken by white marks along the shoreline where the water meets the rock. In the foreground to the right, cliff-top vegetation is described in pink, white and green, with tall stems and flower heads drawn up against the darker ground below. Layered paper is built into the cliffs and foreground, with fragments of printed text left legible in the upper right and lower centre, and acrylic is applied thickly over the collage, laid on with a loaded surface that holds heavy texture across the rock and sea. The palette sets the strong blues of the water and sky against the ochre and green of the land, with white lines scratched and drawn through the surface to describe the birds, the grasses and the movement of the water. Detail in the cliffs and foreground is defined over broader passages of collage and colour, and the texture of the built-up surface is carried through into the finished picture.