Hazel Soan : By the Beach

Hazel Soan's fascination with the contrast between bright sunlight and deep shadow takes her to Africa during the European winter, where she paints from her Cape Town studio overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and ventures into the African bush in her trusty 4x4.

There she paints the people and wildlife of Africa but this year her attention was drawn to the shimmering white beach below her studio. The 5 mile long white strip of sand glimmers with reflected light from the mirrored reflection of two vast oceans either side of the narrow peninsula. White dunes decked with long waving grass are backed by the deep blue of the Atlantic and rimmed by turquoise shallows. Hazel’s walks along the beach and through the dunes inspired a new series of oil paintings. Layering thin tints for the backgrounds, Hazel has combined the transparency admired in her watercolours with the delicious texture of oil paint in the foreground. The canvasses are compelling in their apparent simplicity, quickly revealing the hidden depths of Hazel’s insightful eye as the colour and light draw you in. 

“I am a great follower of the adage ‘Less is More’”, Hazel explains, “it is so tempting to add more, when less already says everything you want to impart. Abstract art shows us how important fields of colour can be just on their own. As a figurative artist, the desire to paint the  people and the objects in the landscape is forever overwhelming, I just want to keep painting and it takes willpower to actually stop! I am very happy with this set of paintings because I recognised when they were complete (although I confess beneath the sand of one or two, you might see hints of driftwood I could not resist but later bravely painted out! I hope you enjoy these paintings as much as I enjoyed painting them”