Pennard Pill is the quiet tidal stream that winds through the dunes of Penmaen Burrows on the Gower Peninsula, slipping past the ruins of 13th-century Pennard Castle before spilling into the wide sands of Three Cliffs Bay. It’s one of those secretive, ever-changing Welsh coastal spots: at low tide a mirror-like creek fringed by salt marsh, at high tide a hidden waterway swallowed by the sea, always atmospheric and half-wild.
The composition of this work is built on a bold horizontal divide: the lower third given to the glassy, reflective tidal river, rendered in cool greys and muted umbers that read almost as negative space; the upper two-thirds claimed by the rising land, dense autumn canopy and the faint silhouette of Pennard Castle emerging from drifting mist. The mist is handled with a sequence of delicate bokashi gradient; the trees through overlapping planes of warm oranges, ochres and muted crimsons, each block with subtle overprinting and wood-grain texture – a nod to the sosaku-hanga interest in material presence. Birds on the cliff edge and the castle’s broken masonry are reduced to near-calligraphic black accents. The result is a landscape that feels both intimately observed and deliberately constructed – quiet, luminous, and with all the mystery of the Burrows intact.
