Once more unto the beach

David Forest Thompson is an artist who simply can't resist a dune shack. Dune shacks, since you ask, are the simple wooden houses dotted along a three mile stretch of coastline at the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

When David Thompson first visited this place he was so taken with it he spent the next three summers painting an individual picture of every last shack. He uses oil paints on canvas to create simple, evocative images of the solitary dwellings. He also takes photographs of the shacks and their surroundings.

It's a landscape where things are constantly changing and it's this sense of fragility that David Thompson finds so appealing. He is also attracted by the way of life of the dune shacks' inhabitants. Everyone, he says, has a story to tell.

And I can't end this story without telling you that, in the late 1980s, David Thompson opened a combined hair salon and art gallery in Boston. It's an inspired idea. Instead of leafing through a load of old magazines, customers at Eclipse can admire the work of local artists while they're waiting for their shampoo and set.