Abandoned Dreams

I find it so sad when boats and all the dreams which they represent are abandoned.

I have been watching little ‘Sea Spray’ for a while, and today I felt the need to go and give her some company. She rests on the sand at Shell Bay in Poole Harbour. Today, the air is bitterly cold, and nobody is around. Little Sea Spray still here, her rigging hanging loose, weed clinging to her rails, and barnacles making their home on her hull. She is a sorry sight.

I learn that her owner stopped paying her mooring fees and she shall now be left to be reclaimed to the elements and whatever Mother Nature throws at her.

Boats represent the dreams we hold, the prospect of escaping to the sea and living the life of endless horizons. Then things happen and stuff changes, our dreams shift, and the boat lays abandoned with all of the dreams which never happened.

My job as an artist is to notice things, notice those lost dreams, those washed up boats, as Shakespeare wrote- 'keep true the dreams of thy youth.' Somewhere along the way of growing up, we lose our dreams. Let us stay childlike and hopeful.