All texts copyright Richard Shillitoe
sea mother
1950
Ink.
Dimensions unknown.
Provenance
NT.
Exhibited
London, Gallery 1, 1957, no. 12.
Penzance, Newlyn Gallery, 1960, no. 64.
Penzance, Newlyn Gallery, 1976, no. 38.
In Goose of Hermogenes, Colquhoun associated powerful female qualities with the sea. A passage
describes descendants of Hesper [Hesperus; the Evening Star; Venus] with the archetypal hero-
woman:
both mother and warrior, debased long since as Britannia, but stemming from the
ancient line of foundered Atlantis.
She goes on to describe her sisters:
all have a family resemblance, all reflect our sea-mother’s noble features. (p. 73).
The image is a maritime equivalent of the earth mother. Fittingly, Colquhoun has used the automatic
process, écrémage, which involves floating pigment on water.