'Submarine' — Painting the Submerged Fenland Landscape

'Submarine' — Painting the Submerged Fenland Landscape

The title of this painting refers to the geological and historical reality of the Cambridgeshire Fenlands: a landscape that was, for most of its history, submerged beneath water. The Fens were drained over several centuries, beginning in earnest in the seventeenth century, and the land that was reclaimed from the sea and the marsh has been in a state of slow subsidence ever since. Much of the Fenland is now below sea level, and the prospect of its eventual return to water is not merely hypothetical.

The Painting

'Submarine' was made in oil and cold wax on canvas, with a palette that draws on the colours of water and submerged earth — deep blues, greens, and the particular grey-brown of waterlogged soil. The surface is heavily worked, with layers of paint and wax built up and scraped back to create a sense of depth and sedimentation.

The composition is deliberately ambiguous: it is not clear whether one is looking at a landscape from above or from below, whether the forms are land or water, whether the painting depicts a present reality or a future one. This ambiguity is intentional — the painting is an attempt to hold the Fenland's complex relationship with water in a form that is both immediate and open to interpretation.