Cornwall-based artist Tony Plant is renowned for creating vast works on beaches, all of which rely on their environment to determine how long they will feature. Inevitably, they are washed away by the tide. He later transposes each of these pieces into partner paintings made in his studio, which further highlight these themes and how nature and art come together. His work is a wonderful celebration of the ever-changing coastal environment and a reminder that impermanence can be treasured.

Oceanographic Magazine (OM): What connects you with the ocean?

Tony Plant (TP): I’ve been wondering that myself recently because it’s been going on for so long, what exactly was it at the start? I grew up on the south coast of Cornwall and now I live on the north coast, so in effect I’ve travelled all around the world but moved less than 30 miles, from the English Channel to the North Atlantic. Growing up on a coast, as I did, means spending a lot of time looking at a horizon, a hard line, over which practically anything can arrive, disappear and reappear – people included. It pays to get down to the beach early and to stay late. It pays to check everywhere twice. Then there are the tides, two a day, every day, forever. Where the sea meets the land, that proximity of horizon feeds the imagination. I’ve surfed for nearly 50 years now (but if you saw me surfing you’d never know it, I’m sure I’m getting worse). Way back then, I did everything my father did – he played water polo, swam, dived and surfed, he taught me to read a weather map, to predict if/when or where the surf will arrive, where the next weather might hit. So my shared love of the sea came from my parents.

As for the connection, I’m comfortable in and around water, alongside painting, I supplemented my living as a water photographer until about 10 years ago when digital cameras exploded. Overnight, everyone became a photographer – surfers started using Go Pro cameras themselves. So I’ve travelled many miles based purely on five-day weather charts and been swimming in some amazing places. I got bounced off the reef at Padang Padang, thrown up on my camera whilst swimming Aileens in Ireland, cried like a baby swimming off Mullaghmore (also Ireland) and watched good friends do impossible things in insane situations. I’m very, very lucky, the same proliferation of digital technology that so heavily impacted the surf magazine industry simultaneously created new and affordable ways for me to time-lapse big drawings from multiple angles. The internet spread the images far and wide, now I get commissions from anywhere and everywhere. I love technology, when it works.

OM: When did you first pick up a paintbrush?

 TP: I was one of those kids who was always drawing on things, paper, walls, inside airing cupboards, on arms, underneath tables and shelves, etc. It’s always seemed very natural – I have no qualms about making marks. Now, all these years later, painting, walking and drawing seem interchangeable, one feeds into the other.

Earlier this year I was selected to spend a very intense month painting in Patrick Heron’s studio in St Ives, Cornwall. Crossing through the doorway of studio five was like stepping over the horizon every morning. Some of the most accomplished artists have conjured up some of my favourite paintings and work from Porthmeor Studios, including Trevor Bell, Peter Lanyon, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Patrick Heron and Sam Bassett.

I walked from Heron’s old studio, out along the beaches, across cliffs, over hedges, past his house and Zennor Church to Zennor Carn, where Bryan Wynter lived and had a studio. My month was spent, painting in the studio, sketching and walking that trail and various incarnations of it, day and night. Drawings like ‘Forever’ are made in that way, by walking, walking forwards, out into empty space, like the first marks on a canvas, like a boat over the horizon. At some point, these walking drawings are channelled back into partnered paintings in the studio. I walk and draw, sometimes for days along a coastline, to gain an understanding of how the shadows move, where the weights and balances of the landscape are, what shape the beach takes, where the likely view points are etc., when I have an understanding of where I am, then I know what to draw on the beach and in the studio.