The story behind the painting.
Prospect Cottage at Dungeness occupies an unusual place in the landscape. It is both a real, recognisable building and something approaching a cultural and historical memory — a place strongly identified with Derek Jarman, with his garden, his films and with the particular melancholy of Dungeness itself. It still looks natural and hasn’t been turned into an obvious tourist attraction. I admire the management company for this restraint.
It has also been painted by artists….. a lot! There were 5 versions in just one exhibition in Hythe. I’ve previously painted the view from the back of the cottage, but it always draws you in, excuse the pun!
I wanted to paint it this time at a moment when the sense of life is especially apparent. The hour immediately before sunset is known in the art world as the “golden hour”. The hour after sunset is known as the “blue hour”. I’ve caught the cottage here as the light has switched into the blue hour. At this time of day the cottage normally appears dull and empty of emotion, with its familiar form becoming not much more than a silhouette in the sparse, timeless and darkening landscape. There is always a sense of something preserved there — a national treasure frozen in time, but it appears lifeless compared to daytime.
But Blue Prospects introduces this rare moment to you. Here, I’ve captured two forms of light rarely depicted in the myriad of painted interpretations of the cottage, probably because it’s a difficult moment to capture in art. But it’s brought the cottage to life.
You can just see the last remnants of the distant sunset catching the extremities of the roof and garden sculpture, and we are clearly into the blue hour. The contrasting warm light from inside the cottage suggests that something is still happening there. Human presence has returned to a landscape that can otherwise feel empty. The light spilling from the windows becomes almost physical, extending beyond the walls of the cottage into its surroundings as the last breath of daylight fades.
The question being asked is deliberately ambiguous: who is looking in, and…who is looking out?
That ambiguity matters here. From outside, the illuminated rooms invite us to imagine the lives being lived within them. From inside, the same windows become frames through which the vast, darkening landscape is observed, along with any movement in the shadows.
The thing is, have you been spotted? The painting places the viewer where you can experience the outside, and observe and visualise the inside, while looking for the connection between them.
To carry the idea further, ‘Blue’ not only acknowledges that special form of light that we call ‘the blue hour’, but inevitably, Jarman’s final film, called Blue. “Prospects” refers directly to Prospect Cottage, but also to the possibility of what lies ahead. The light becomes a quiet counterpoint to the melancholy of the setting: not optimism in the conventional sense, but the suggestion that something can continue beyond what has already been lost to the past and the closing darkness.
In that respect, the painting is as much about time as it is about place. It holds a moment between day and night, between memory and presence, between what has been and what might yet happen. During the blue hour, we famously switch on our lights at home, but we often don’t immediately draw the curtains. It’s a fabulous time for a walk!
Blue Prospects asks the viewer to inhabit that moment for a little longer — and to decide for themselves what they are seeing in that mix of two lights.
Prints
Prints of Blue Prospects are available, and produced for me by a Platinum-certified printshop on museum-grade Hahnemühle archival paper. Their prints are stunning.
Size guide, but custom sizes are also available;
Full size 570mm print — £200
12″ print — £99.
Email me for details.
Prints are also available of my original painting of the cottage, shown below. A few years ago, the garden was more defined with various sculptural pieces. I hope these have been preserved, rather than stolen, but I captured them before the loss of this nice design feature, plus it was a really bright sunny and positive day.
