Hayle Towans Beach 

Curator: Welcome. Before us hangs "Hayle Towans Beach" by John Miller, rendered in watercolor. There is no creation date available, unfortunately. What is your first take on it? Editor: A vast, open expanse. It evokes a sense of serenity, almost loneliness, doesn’t it? The palette is so subdued and dreamy, that hazy blue merging seamlessly with the sandy hues. Curator: Absolutely. Considering watercolor's traditional ties to plein-air painting, the piece echoes the 19th-century project of capturing immediate experience within broader academic painting. It brings up how these paintings could sometimes invite tourism. What’s striking here, though, is the minimal human presence; a choice to represent or perhaps to imagine the beach, maybe during the off-season? Editor: I wonder about accessibility, though. Who gets to access this idyllic beach? Is the off-season quietness only available to some? This composition really strips everything down; a political statement about the availability of open space? Or the elusiveness of experiencing these scenes without an awareness of its surrounding sociopolitical contexts? Curator: That's a fair challenge. Thinking about art's social role, we have to wonder, what did seascapes offer its audience at the time—a respite from industrializing cities? A space to ponder human's relationship to nature? There is some tradition in modernist abstraction, maybe Miller is following that trend? Editor: True. Maybe that is not just about capturing beauty. The painting makes us question who gets to define and access spaces like this beach and even access art. It reminds us how landscape art also implicates the way power shapes who gets to "see" themselves represented within that scenery, or if not to question who that idyllic world excludes. Curator: It gives me something to consider the next time I see such calm waters in real life. Editor: It is an artwork that leaves you with more questions than answers, which is its strength. It lingers in the mind.