Artist: Heather Brennan
Date: 1983
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 111 × 111 cm
Credit: Towner Collection, gift of the artist. Image Towner Eastbourne, © The Artist
Heather Brennan grew up in Eastbourne attending Glasgow School of Art as a mature student. This painting embodies Brennan’s love of the beach and is concerned with the all over pattern made by figures, shadows and structures. The title refers to the blue paint used by the local authority on the railings and lamp posts at that time. She was influenced by Stanley Spencer’s work called Southwold, a sunlit painting where the focal point is a towel blowing in the wind, the figures and deckchairs forming a pattern behind.
Corporation Blue is one of several works of people at the seaside that Brennan produced while at art school, she reflected “I can hear the sound of the shingle as I look at it.”