Coastal Diaries #1: Capturing a Norfolk Seascape at Brancaster Beach

Coastal Diaries: Norfolk Seascape Painting at Brancaster Beach | Ben Goymour

One stolen hour, a path through the dunes, and a sea that wouldn’t sit still...

That’s the memory I carried back from Brancaster. We’d pitched up for a family camping trip and spent the day down on Brancaster Beach. While the beach buzzed with laughter, spades digging in the sand, and the tide quietly sliding out, I slipped away with my painting kit. Just for an hour, an hour stolen from the day, with no real plan. Just the urge to chase the light hitting the silver sea.

Finding the Perfect Spot in the Dunes

I headed off a few hundred meters behind where our base was on the beach and found a lovely quiet spot in the dunes. Marram grass bent in the breeze to my left and right, and the light was restless, clouds drifting shadows, the water catching and releasing the sun in quick flashes. Each minute felt like a new canvas.

The Art of Letting Go

Painting outdoors really teaches you to let go of control. You can’t stop the tide or hold the clouds still, and the light never waits for you. One minute the water is deep blue, the next it’s a sheet of silver, and suddenly the whole painting feels like it needs to shift with it. You move quickly, chasing shapes and mixing colours as the world keeps changing in front of your eyes. It’s part panic, trying to keep up, but mostly quite liberating because it forces you to stop overthinking and just respond to what’s there.

My first instinct is always to get the canvas covered in paint, blocking in some values so I’ve got a base to work from. Once the paint is down, I can start making decisions. Is my perspective right? Are the colours balanced? Does the sea feel alive? I’ll look down to focus on a section, brush moving fast, and by the time I glance up again the scene has already changed. Clouds have shifted, the tide has pulled back another metre, or the sun has broken through for just a moment before vanishing again.

I soon realised I’d never catch it perfectly, because the coast refuses to sit still. And maybe that’s the point. It isn’t about freezing one exact second, it’s about chasing the rhythm and energy of it all — holding onto the feeling of that fleeting moment, the one stolen hour.

From Quick Sketch to Studio Masterpiece

And that stolen hour on Brancaster Beach didn’t just end with the sketch. When I got back to the studio, that quick study became the starting point for a slightly larger piece. I wasn’t trying to copy it stroke for stroke as you can see the two are slightly different, but I wanted to hold onto the energy of the moment, the restless sky, the glints of silver on the water, and the sense of being alone in the dunes while life carried on just down the beach.

The sketch carried all the urgency of working against the changing light, and in the studio I could take a breath, look at it with fresh eyes, and let it guide me. The brushstrokes slowed down, the colours found their balance, but I tried not to lose the looseness that made the study feel alive. In the end, the finished painting became a blend of that one fleeting hour outdoors and the quiet reflection that came afterward, a Norfolk seascape painting that holds onto how it felt to be there.

A Piece of Brancaster

 The stidio Peice and limited edition prints and available in my shop for anyone who would like to have a little part of Brancaster in their life.

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