A final fling…

During the 1980’s my studio was located on the shore of an idyllic cove in the British Virgin Islands.  In those days my 16 ton gaff cutter shared the pristine anchorage with no more than a handful of visiting yachts and a couple of inter-island cargo boats. 

All too soon marinas, hotels and condominiums invaded my paradise and I moved on.  However, before leaving I took out one of my largest sheets of watercolour paper and had a final fling.  But alas, even my farewell image was fated not to last.  In moving back and forth between the Caribbean and England the painting was damaged beyond recall. 

For years, those vibrant brush strokes have existed only in my memory.  And mine is a selective memory.  It can remember every painting I have ever painted over the last seventy years but cannot remember my telephone number.  Neither can it remember making a high definition scan of the original painting when selecting illustrations for my book Caribbean Sketches.  

The scan came to light when my high-tech daughter resurrected the hard disc from one of my defunct computers.  So here it is, my last vision of the Virgin Islands.