A New Commission for "For the Love of the North"

"St Mary's Lighthouse II"

I grew up in West Monkseaton and I spent a lot of time on the beach at Whitley Bay. St Mary's Lighthouse and the Spanish City are the town's most significant landmarks and both hold a special place in the heart of any "ex-pat" such as myself. As such I was delighted when I was commissioned by For the Love of the North to do a picture of St Mary's Lighthouse.

I am really pleased with the way this picture has come out. I am especially pleased with the sea, as it's quite hard to capture the movement of the waves and I think this is my best attempt yet. I am also quite chuffed at finding just the right two shades of Harris Tweed to represent both the wet and dry sand of the beach. Greetings cards of this image will be available in a few weeks, but prints of the image are available now from our online shop and from For the Love of the North.

For the Love of the North is a gift shop/gallery in Whitley Bay run by local residents Paul and Lucy Hull. The shop features artwork, cards, prints, crafts and gifts sourced directly from independent artists and suppliers who live and work in the North East. Paul and Lucy say that they carefully select the artists and artisans they work with in order to represent, in their opinion, the very best of what the North East has to offer. They are also passionate about promoting the North East as a great place to live and visit, and all items purchased from their online shop come with a tourism tip containing personally recommended things to do and places to visit in the area.

Based on the success of their Whitley Bay shop which opened in early 2017, the pair will be opening an additional outlet on August 6th 2018 in an exciting new development in the centre of Newcastle called Stack. For the Love of the North is located at 266 Whitley Road, Whitley Bay and is open from 10 am – 4pm Monday to Friday and from 9.30am – 5pm on Saturdays.
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​The pictures below show something of how the picture progressed with the usual help from Audrey.

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The background pieces of Harris Tweed pinned and ready to be needle felted into place.

All Harris Tweed pieces now needle felted into place.

Audrey "helping" as usual.

Needle felting the details into place using wool yarns, in this case a beautifully soft hand dyed and hand spun alpaca yarn from Lucy Locket Land