Farr Bay

This wide stretch of beach in the far north of Scotland shows Farr Bay, a real place near the village of Bettyhill on the Sutherland coast. Peter Foyle paints it with thick, confident strokes of oil paint, letting the sand take up nearly half the canvas in pale creams and blush pinks. The water pools in the middle in bright turquoise and deep blue, while a small white house sits on the headland to the left, keeping watch over the empty shore.

Foyle is a Scottish painter known for his loose, energetic handling of paint, and you can see it here in the blocky dabs that make up the rocks scattered across the sand. Rather than smoothing everything out, he leaves the marks visible, so the whole scene feels built up patch by patch. The heavy blue sky presses down against the bright land, giving the painting a real sense of northern light, the kind that comes when the sun breaks through after weather has passed over the sea.