Late in 2022 Mountjoy began cycling to Plymouth and the Cattedown working waterfront. Stopping at Mountbatten, Hooe, Oreston, and Turnchapel he drew the wharves and quays across the water. The commercial sites that receive and export clay, oil, cement, and other cargos. He wanted to study a less glamorous environment, and explore the contrast with the remote coastlines that featured in his previous project.

Mountjoy believes that the act of looking hard, to make a drawing of a subject is the best way to understand it. There is a meeting of knowledge and curiosity that, when he attempts to record what he sees, lifts him to a new level of awareness. To the artist the resulting drawings are of lesser consequence than the intrinsic value that the activity generates. But they are part of the story and he shares them here.

His quick sketches were reworked; revisiting the scene and deepening the cognitive response, as with previous projects;. The Waterlines series of paintings continue evolving from the drawings but soon began to develop their own momentum.

To date (October 2025) he has completed 50+ paintings in acrylic on board and aluminium panel, using layers of colour scratched through to evoke the abrasion of industrial use and the transformation of the subject as time and tide fights back.

Grey dominates the palette but there is underpainting in those colours brought into the estuary by the ships and the brightly painted plant that loads and unloads them.