Adventure on the High Seas

In 2020 the Viola Trust asked Larry Malkin to produce a calendar featuring 12 boats and ships important to the Port of Hull. This calendar was sold to raise money to bring home the Viola-Dias which currently lies rusting away in Grytviken, South Georgia. The Viola was built in Beverley in 1906, and the Viola Trust is trying to bring her back to her home port of Hull before it is too late. 

These calendar pictures with those of a second calendar commemorating the part that the 9 Hull registered vessels played in the liberation of the Falkland Islands in 1982 form a major part of this exhibition. Other pictures show the Viola being launched, moving down the river Hull, and leaving the fish dock on her first voyage out on station with the Boxer Fleet, along with a variety of seascapes.'

My Work:

My paintings of ships and seascapes started with pictures of the paddle steamer ‘Lincoln Castle’ way back in the 1970s, when as a teacher, I was seconded to BBC Radio Humberside to make education programmes. The Humber Bridge had not opened, so journeys to the South Bank and the Grimsby studios depended on the paddle steamers and the level and state of the tide. To paint this wonderful old vessel on the muddy waters of the river Humber, became a challenge as the Humber is a muddy brown coloured stream, highlighted with silver-blue sky reflections. This proved impossible to replicate until I slashed at the canvas with sweeping brush strokes from the shoulder with a long thin rigger brush. This suddenly gave the right effect. I now work in the same manner with all seas, blocking in with a wide brush, working from the shoulder and then adding movement with the rigger.

Larry Malkin