PepsCreative

Requiescat

My mum painted a series of seaside scenes when I was younger, many inspired by the fishing boats she’d spotted along the Yorkshire coast. Years later, I came across a painting in Leeds City Art Gallery that immediately reminded me of her work. It showed a group of abandoned, skeletal boats from a very similar viewpoint.

The painting was Requiescat by Edward Wadsworth, and it recently reappeared at Leeds Art Gallery as part of an exhibition exploring the connections between Yorkshire and Cornish abstract artists. It’s since become one of my favourite paintings. Painted on the south coast in 1940, within earshot of the war unfolding in France, it seems to carry a real sense of unease and anticipation about the years of violence still to come.

Wadsworth was a founding figure in the British avant-garde alongside artists such as Paul Nash, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, and played an important role in shaping modern British art between the wars.

I only recently discovered that he had more local Yorkshire connections too — he spent time at boarding school in Ilkley and studied at Bradford School of Art. During the First World War he was also involved in transferring dazzle camouflage designs onto Royal Navy ships. One of his best-known paintings, Dazzle-Ships in Drydock at Liverpool, captures that remarkable work.

Mum’s painting lives on in my studio room at home.