An Index of the Colour of Water Artist’s book

It’s often said that the ocean is blue, but that’s not entirely true. An Index of the Colour of Water is a collection of daily photographs of the sea, taken in April 2025 from a small beach on Scotland’s west coast. Looking at the sea every day reveals many things, one of which is that there’s no one blue that the sea can be. Often, it isn’t blue at all. These photographs follow the subtle (and not so) shifts in the surface water, recording the changing hues as a way of collecting a souvenir of a particular time, place, and colour. The photographs are accompanied by descriptions of water from writers who have also noticed acutely that, as well as being blue, water is also crystalline turquoise, or amethyst, or copper, or so clear as to be colourless.

If the colour of water is limitless, if one small pocket of the sea can thrill a person every day—or every hour, or even every minute as the sun sets or rises or slips behind a cloud—how much beauty does the whole ocean hold? Not only what reflects off the surface, but beneath? When I look at the colour of the sea at its edges turning sharp silver, scintillating blue, lime jello or warm pink, I have no conscious desire to look anywhere else, but I do think that close attention towards any one thing inevitably spills into attention elsewhere, pulling more of the world into focus. I used the sea as a starting point. Others can, and do, choose their own. In the words of Mary Oliver, “I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours”.

Created as a limited edition of 30 handmade pamphlets, one for each day in April, each book was stitched by hand with individually hand cut pages inside, featuring a unique cover and small print of that day’s sea inside.

Pages: Munken Lynx Rough Natural White

Cover: Gmund Urban Architect Powder

Printed by Exactaprint. Pocket and cover photographs printed by Deadly Digital.

With thanks to Visual Arts and Craft Makers Scotland for supporting the making of this book.