BLUE Planet may be the most influential TV programme for many years. It speaks so directly to people’s endless fascination with the sea. “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, we are going back from whence we came,” wrote John F. Kennedy, a career Navy officer before becoming US president.

Wellington-based painter Claire Western shares Kennedy’s deep and endless fascination with the world of wave and tide. Her first one-woman show for ten years, entitled Water’s Edge, is a collection of new work that homes in on the Westcountry’s shorelines.

“I grew up by the sea in Exmouth so my earliest memories are of being on the beach and looking across to Dawlish and the headlands towards Torquay,” said Claire. “Work and family have taken me to live in other places over the years but never far from the sea. I still spend many weeks a year sailing or walking around Devon and Cornwall’s coastlines.

“However, there are pluses to living now between the Quantock and Blackdown Hills. The rivers and streams where my spaniel loves to swim are giving

me other perspectives on water in motion and some of these paintings are part of the new exhibition.”

Claire has been Head of Art at Queen’s College, Taunton, for the past decade but has continued to paint, with her work featured in galleries and exhibitions across Devon and Cornwall. “I’m leaving my job this summer to focus my teaching energies on a series of adult classes, plus another exhibition in the New Year,” she said. Details of the courses will be at www.clairewestern.co.uk later this year.

Water’s Edge is at The Old Brick Workshop, Wellington TA21 9HW from April 2-8, 10am- 4pm.