Artists statement:
‘Tis but moonlight on the water’- was there ever a more deluded observation? Crunch, Batavia hits the reef and then the disastrous shemozzle. I cannot imagine a more desperate place to end up. If the painting conveys some of this – well and good. Compositionally, I kept the protagonists – the moon, the clouds, the reflections, reef, and ship – well separated – so they are individual, and one sees them one at a time, and to go from one to another is to traverse a canvas of spay sky.
The colour – cold agoraphobia.