A North Wales environmental artist who creates temporary sculptures from driftwood, pebbles and discarded toys has revealed how his creations vanish like “magic dust” when the tide comes in.
Tim Pugh, 59, from Flintshire, crafts his artworks on beaches and in woodlands using whatever materials he discovers each day, including old toys, miners’ tags and washed-up army parachutes.
He claimed the Adult Artistic prize at the World Rock Stacking Championships in 2019 and 2020, and recently secured second place in the Adult Finalist category at the European Stone Stacking Championships, reports PA.
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The full-time environmental artist’s creations are intended to “leave a light touch on the land”, washing away without leaving any trace behind.
Among his most cherished pieces are colourful flowers crafted from mussel shells, delicately balanced stone towers, and sea creatures fashioned from discarded plastic.
“I like the transience of it – I think that’s the magical thing about it,” Tim told PA Real Life. “There’s a lot of people making stone stacks now, and a lot of people say they despoil the landscape.
“It’s not for me to antagonise people, but to show that my work really will fall down and totally disappear within a matter of days.”
Tim developed his passion for land art whilst studying at Edinburgh College of Art. His lecturers picked up on his interest in the environment and started taking him to nearby beaches to “look at the impact of waves on clay and things like that”.
After graduating, he moved back to North Wales and started working in woods and parks as a land artist.
Tim explained: “I’m one of those people who said, ‘I’m going to be an artist and nothing else’. It’s an all-consuming thing, this art.”
Tim uses all sorts of mediums for his land art, including mud -Credit:Collect/PA Real Life
He was supported by his grandmother Beatrix, a “staunch ally” who encouraged him during the difficult early years of starting out as an artist.
“Apart from my gran, most of the family were against it as a way of life,” he said.
Through residencies, school workshops and exhibitions, Tim has been able to earn a living as a full-time artist, even being taught in primary schools as part of the Welsh art curriculum.
He spends most of his time on Whitehaven beach in Cumbria and in North Wales, engaged in a constant cycle of creating sculptures out of stones, driftwood and detritus, photographing them and then letting them wash away.
One artwork shows shells fanning out from a tidepool like a sun.
In others, he uses materials like pebbles, twisted chunks of metal and tyres to create delicately balanced sculptures that seem to defy gravity.
“It’s great for making sculptures, and it’s got lots of fossils and driftwood on it,” he said.
“There’s a family of ravens that come down and eat my sandwiches every time I go – they trust me now.
“It’s like my studio. We’ve had these storms the last few weeks, and they brought lots of new detritus and materials to play with.”
Tim said he sometimes plans ideas in advance with drawings, but they often change depending on what has washed up.
“Often I find really poignant things like miners’ tags,” he said. “When a miner went underground at the nearby mines, if they don’t put the tag back when they finished working, you know they’re still down there.”
Tim’s artworks are designed to wash away with the tide -Credit:PA Real Life
He said he has also found bits of old railway lines, children’s toys and even an army parachute. He added: “I went to a beach once in North Wales, and it was awash with baby starfish, unfortunately all dead. I abandoned my ideas and worked with the poor little starfish to make a pattern.”
Tim said he is careful not to work with living things, inspecting rocks to remove any snails that might be crushed.
Beyond the beach, he also works with fallen leaves in the woods and snow in the mountains.
He voiced concern about the “worrying trend” of hikers taking stones from ancient walls, cairns and hill forts to build stone stacks.
“Leaving a light touch on the land is very important, because I do understand these criticisms about these stone stacks: they do proliferate,” he said.
“The beach I work with, I know it’s quite violent with high tides, so all of my work is obliterated, even the chunky stuff.”
Tim said the ‘sheer impermanence’ of his artworks is what makes them ‘magical’ -Credit:PA Real Life
Tim said this “sheer impermanence” is the “magic dust” in his work. He added that he has a “love-hate relationship” with the plastic that washes up on the beach.
While often “seduced by the vivid colours”, he said he despairs about the scale of plastic pollution.
In one sculpture, multicoloured fragments of plastic become smoke billowing out of an industrial tower. Another depicts a sea turtle, one of the species impacted heavily by plastic pollution in the oceans.
Tim regularly collects plastic from the beach and uses it to teach school children about plastic pollution.
“A lot of local people don’t notice it any more when they walk, scattered amongst the rocks, because they’re that accustomed to the plastic,” he said.
“We’ve all done it, taken toys to the beach and forgotten about them and lost them.
“I like to think there’s a narrative to them: they’ve been loved, they’ve been lost and they’ve undertaken a voyage.”
Five years ago, while exploring the beach, Tim slipped on some seaweed-covered boulders and broke his arm in two places.
“I had to climb this cliff with one arm and all my camera equipment, because the sea was coming in and it had cut me off,” he said.
Tim with his stacked stones at a recent competition in Dunbar -Credit:PA Real Life
Three months later in 2019, he was crowned the world champion in adult artistic stone stacking at the Llano Earth Art Festival in Texas – a title he kept the following year.
He will return to Texas next March, having earned second place in July this year in the Adult Finalist category at the European Stone Stacking Championships in Dunbar, Scotland.
“[The European Land Art Festival] is a fantastic event because it’s for people of all ages and abilities to come down and have a go,” he said.
“It’s good for children that think they’re not good at art, because they can just have a go and there are no wrongs or rights.
“There’s nearly always a gang of lads that are a bit cheeky in class, and you put them on the beach – you have to drag them away in the end.”
Tim advised hopeful land artists to “just have a go at a simple shape in your back yard or on a local beach”.
He added: “As we say in Wales, ’tisio go’: give it a go!”
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