Breath-taking images of the shifting lights and colours of the Solway will feature in a pop-up exhibition in Carlisle’s historical quarter this summer.
Landscape artist Joe Dias will exhibit some of his favourite paintings at the pop-up gallery in Paternoster Row from August 21 to August 27.
Joe said he had been fascinated by the haunting presence of the Solway since he holidayed there as a child.
As a young teenager living in Bowness-on-Solway, he would play with driftwood, making shapes and watching them drift away with the tide, only to be washed up in a different pattern a little further down the beach.
In later life Joe would experiment with the “ocean as artist”, wedging pieces of strong paper between rocks and letting the tide create its own pictures which Joe would enhance with watercolours.
“The power of the tides to shift thousands of tonnes of sand has always captivated me,” said Joe. “The Solway estuary is a place that both exhilarates me and frightens me – a place that was safe to walk on yesterday but can be treacherous today.”
Doubt, uncertainty and ambiguity are continuing themes in Joe’s work. He added: “What is real, solid and safe and, crucially, what isn’t, are important concerns when walking and living on the Solway.”
Joe, who has a studio in Raughton Head, has harnessed the power of nature not only in his paintings but as a traditional Haaf net fisherman. Haaf is the Viking word for sea – and it is the Vikings who first practised this style of fishing using wooden beams and a net.
“The beams we use today are reportedly the length of a Viking oar,” said Joe. “And we wade out to sea, staying with the net, as fishermen have done for thousands of years.”
Joe started drawing at a young age and, at 14, painted his first landscape in oil after inheriting his great aunt’s paint box. His first commission came just two years later when a friend of his father’s asked him to paint a still life of a heron on a nest.
Since that first commission, Joe said he was the first to admit that being an artist wasn’t always the most lucrative profession and he has worked a variety of jobs over the years to fund his passion.
“I have been a firefighter, a frozen food lorry driver and worked on a farm,” said Joe. “But probably the job I enjoyed the most was working at a cellophane factory in Wigton.
“The craic was unbelievable and I worked with some amazing people. Hans came over in the war from Germany and was sent to an internment camp at London Zoo, of all places, before finding his way to Cumbria.
“We used to shout out our stories to each other over the sound of the machines. I worked there for four years and will always remember it as a special time. Work has kept me rooted and grounded.”
Original art works and prints will be on sale during the pop up exhibition in August which also features Joe’s study of a field, close to his house, in a series of five very different paintings at different times of the year.
