Shadows on the Beach, Aldeburgh

In 1951 Mary Potter moved from London to Aldeburgh on the Suffolk coast, where she lived for the next thirty years until her death in 1981. Much of the subject matter for her works was inspired by her surroundings of the coastal scenery and marshy landscape, which she sometimes sketched from her studio window and although from the late 1950s her work became more abstracted, she never fully embraced absolute abstraction. David Brown comments, 'Mary Potter's art is one of suggestion rather than description. It is quiet and unemphatic but never sweet or sentimental, and has a lasting resonance' (see Exhibition catalogue, Mary Potter Paintings 1922-80, London, Serpentine Gallery, 1981, introduction).