Pebble Pile 2. Paper Print.

Walk any Cornish beach and sooner or later you'll find them — little towers of balanced pebbles, built by strangers and left behind. No name, no explanation. Just a quiet sign that someone was here, that they stopped, that they paid attention. It's an ancient impulse: to make a small mark on a wild place, and leave something behind for the next person to find.

In St Ives you'll sometimes see real masters at work, coaxing impossibly tall towers into balance, each stone cantilevered against the next, defying what looks possible. The rest of us try our own version and feel the same satisfaction when it stands.

This painting is about that tradition. Each pebble is built individually in Rachel's layered mixed media technique — painted and printed papers chosen and worked to give every stone its own character, its own weight and surface, its own particular markings, just as no two pebbles on the beach are ever quite alike. The tall stack rises against the cool greens and greys of a Porthleven sea, a monument to a moment of quiet human playfulness on one of Cornwall's most beautiful harbours.

A painting for someone who has built their own pebble tower and felt quietly pleased when it stood.

Also available as a canvas print.