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With a lifetime living on the Exe, artist Ray Balkwill describes painting as his second career. In over 30 years of sketching and painting the area, his unique insight into the landscape has allowed him to see how much his stretch of the river has changed over the years. He conducts much of his painting en plein air (outside), granting him the chance to combine his love of nature with his love of drawing and painting. Here, Ray reflects on a familiar stretch of the Exmouth waterfront seen through his eyes as an artist.
This trail marker is situated on Imperial Recreational Ground on a post beside the shoremark pole, looking over to the back of Camperdown Terrace.
What 3 Words: ///kilt.writings.marked
Ray: The boats would be coming – EssoJersey, Guidesman, then Tillerman. For a 15, 16-year-old boy, it was amazing because I think that was my introduction to boats actually. Because I loved the idea of where this boat was coming from, what it was going to unload, where it was going to go from here. Although I’m not a boaty person, I’m not a sailor or anything like that, I don’t like actually being on water or in water even, but I do like the idea of boats as a subject and the stories they have to tell, you know, particularly if they’ve got character. That was, that introduction, was my first introduction to I suppose the estuary in a way.
I think from the point of view of Exmouth, the docks going was a big loss of identity and character. OK, a lot of people would argue whether it was messy, noisy, dirty. Yes, it was. With the fertilizer and the grains being unloaded, the ships. It was a messy place. With the chalets down there, that had real character but again, I’m looking at it through my artist’s eyes and not through someone who has to live down there and put up with all the mess. From the point of view, from the point of view of things that I’m not happy with, the changes have been dramatic, but, I think necessary. It’s like Camperdown Creek or Shelly Gut, where I go down and sketch and paint the most, the last 30 years. Boat sheds have come down, boat building families have gone, my friends Geoff Holman and Ron Lavis. Ron, his father was a boat builder, his father before him was a shipwright. It goes back 125 years. That was all pulled down a few years ago.
That view is changing. As an artist, it’s magical because you’ve got the land as well as the sea, which changes. The estuary, as you say, you look across to the Holden Hills and that side of the estuary is just another world. You can walk through lanes and fields and not see a soul in the middle of August, whereas over this side of the estuary, it’s heaving with people of course. There’s two contrasts to the estuary. The other side is a wonderful place to live. The darker side, because obviously, we get the sunsets, they get the sun going down a little bit earlier, but from the point of view of the countryside, it’s stunning.
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