All The Water People

ALL THE WATER PEOPLE
Watercolour - by Maureen Wilkinson

Maureen painted this picture in 2009 after a ferry crossing to northern Spain.  She later wrote this about it...

"Recently Fred and I made the 17 hour boat trip from Plymouth to Santander. The sea was choppy and I noticed that the wake of our boat stretched like a white road behind us, floating with white bubbles which slowly disappeared; a visual metaphor for a road once travelled. I watched the ocean for some time, remembering the first time we had crossed the channel together several decades earlier, as eighteen year old students and new lovers.

Sometimes I think of time as a series of overlapping transparent selves which are stepped through, so that the image of self becomes multi-layered like a hologram, with no self or time ever quite relinquished. That day the leaping waves and floating lacy bubbles led me to imagine a series of weddings taking place beneath the surface of the ocean, where ‘all the water people were dancing at the wedding of the brides.’ Since water people’s bodies are entirely fluid they can clearly ‘step from self to self and time to time’ with especial ease. I have always liked this picture for its air of complete and oblivious celebration!"

The picture include the words...

Night descended. All the water people
were dancing at the wedding of the brides.  
They stepped from life to life, from time to time
as we may do in dreams  
because the glassy chambers of the ocean
employed no boundaries.