That summer morning in 2024, stepping into Berwick with the promise of Lowry and the Sea. The culmination of destinations. Not just my own, but also in the Tweed’s own travels. From the Southern Uplands of Scotland, right through to meet me here. An old friend calling me back.
The walk towards the Granary Gallery along the Elizabethan Quay unfolded as if a dream. Following the confident curve of the old stone walls, seabirds wheeled freely above in an impossible cobalt blue.
Climbing upwards, a rising sense of anticipation took hold. Me and Lowry walking these same streets, sketchbook tucked under his arm, hunting for the light. For that ordinary moment of magic.
As the Granary Gallery appeared, half-hidden in shade, cool air settled around me as I stepped inside.
The climb to the gallery level seemed filled with anticipation. And then. The meeting of minds in wonder and illumination. Lowry’s paintings shining as beacons across time. Alive, open, undiscovered in the search for every detail. Dark, stroke-made figures standing against sweeping stretches of shoreline. Vast expanses of sea. Cathedrals of nature set alongside our own trap of industry. The pull between vulnerability and power. The lost.
I reflected on the man himself. Those years of retreat spent here, soaking in the never-quite-settled tide. Much like these paintings. Stories echoing lives gone. The untravelled now captured in paint for eternity and voyaged without knowing to be lodged as sea-treasure, here, amidst the ancient stones of an old granary store.
