Sandy Waters

I built this piece around the memory of looking down from a harbour wall and seeing shoals flare with sudden colour as sunlight pierced the chop.  By breaking each fish across three separate tiles, I wanted to mimic that fleeting glimpse: you catch a flash of tail, then the body slides into view, the head gone before you can focus.  The grid becomes a set of film stills, freezing motion without ever quite pinning it down.

For texture I mixed two backgrounds.  Crushed saffron glass stands in for sun-lit shallows, while a granulated turquoise evokes deeper water stirred by breeze.  Against these fields I inlaid shards of stained glass, crockery and mirror, letting the off-cuts dictate scale patterns and fin rays.  The top fish swims in cool seaside blues, the middle bristles with warning stripes of yellow and black, and the bottom flares with sunset reds and corals—three moods of one restless sea.

As I laid the final tesserae I kept thinking about fragmentation and wholeness.  Our perception of the marine world is often broken—partial sightings through water and glare—yet the life beneath is integrated and complete.  By forcing viewers to assemble each creature in their minds, I hope they feel a playful invitation to look again, to piece together what lies beneath the surface.