‘St Abbs’. Acrylic on 20×16″ canvas

St Abbs (detail)

Today’s painting – St Abbs Bay on the east coast near the Border.

Those rocks really are as colourful as they’ve been painted. This part of the coastline is quite famous for its beauty, but also it’s near to where Professor Hutton made his discoveries about geology at Siccar Point

There’s a trail named after him which takes you all along the east coast from the Borders to Dunbar, where you can see the faults and intrusions which proved Hutton’s theory that our planet was much, much older than first believed.

The pink, yellow and purple rocks above are igneous  and the grey lower rocks, called Greywrake, are a remnant from the Silurian era – the former beach basically – you can see the bleached effect of tides from an earlier era, which also shows up the colour of crystal clear water. Apparently there would have been more tropical climes then, not unlike today’s weather – we have a mini heatwave in Edinburgh today, and though I know a lot of people hate this mugginess I’m quite enjoying it!