dominique cameron RSW

During the Glasgow trades fortnight his mum would rent out their front room. The town would be full to the brim. Donkey rides on the beach, boat trips round the bay, boys fishing from the pier. An old man sails his fishing boat out to sea and falls asleep.

An oil rig in the Forth, waiting for it’s future.

Dogs chasing gulls, chasing children chasing gulls across fields of Fife collecting birds eggs, way back when.

The retired, the self-employed, the not working people of the town sit on benches, faces tilt to the lukewarm sun saying, ‘Braw day.’

And the holidays seem not so far away, a memory or two caught in the twinkling lights of the amusement arcade, there and then not in the late afternoon November half light.

Mixed media on plywood – 40 x 50 cm.

Ink on paper.

Ink on paper -10 x 15 cm.

Acrylic on plywood – 61 x61cm.

Oil on panel – 18 x 13 cm.

Sharp, bright morning, frost on the ground. Cobwebs sunlit on the wooden pier. A man fishes for whelks on the low tide.

Oil and charcoal on plywood – 25 x 20 cm.

Ink on paper.

Ink drawing on paper .

The curve of the sea wall veers left away to the town. Turning round it juts out into the Forth, too far to see. The fisherman’s wharf – pilings, planks, criss-crossing, small boats tied up. Low tide. Part of the harbour wall has collapsed, exposed like a cavity in a tooth, sensitive to the grey cold water. Razor wire snags my coat at the padlocked gate, admission not permitted beyond this point. A shag treads water close to a small wedge of sand where the pier meets the harbour wall. Plastic bottles, gloves, traffic cones, a Flymo without its motor. The coal hoists have gone, where once trains called pugs would pull their wagons, each one lifted by the hoist into waiting boats. By the mid 1930’s three milion tonnes of coal left this dock. Long gone. The giant turbine turns slowly in the thick grey rain. I am the only one here.