Life is literally a beach for Tony Plant.

He spends his days creating art on sands around the world.

The downside, of course, is watching his painstakingly crafted pieces disappear with the tide.

Mr Plant, who lives in Newquay, Cornwall, finds beach art meditative and grounding.

The 52-year-old has been raking enormous geometric shapes across the world’s beaches for the past 20 years.

He’ll teach the skill to others in a workshop this week as part of the Fourth Annual Bermuda Beach Art Festival.

“Beach art really helps people to engage with the marine landscape,” he said. “They help people to see how much trash is on the beach. They help people see the state of things.”

He believes the large scale drawings act as a way of slowing people down, in a positive way.

“People are so hectic these days that it is not often that they have the chance to stop and appreciate where they are,” he said.

Mr Plant frequently conducts workshops and believes they help to raise environmental awareness.

Lately, he’s been working on Porthcurno Beach, in Cornwall.

“This is one of the last beaches in England before Bermuda,” he said. “From Porthcurno, Bermuda is 3,210 miles away. It is just beautifully wild there. I keep looking out and thinking Bermuda’s on the other side. I am so excited about coming to Bermuda.”

He believes that some of the trash that washes up on the beaches of Cornwall actually comes from Bermuda.

“I haven’t seen anything specific,” he said, “but I know the current brings things up past Bermuda and to Cornwall. We get the tail end of a lot of the storms you’ve had.”

Mr Plant graduated from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London in 1990. It was there that he was inspired by a professor to take up beach art.

“The professor would burn pieces of drift wood on the beach to make shapes,” he said.

Some of Mr Plant’s pieces are 60ft long and can only be fully appreciated from above.

“It’s one thing to draw on paper but when you are moving a rake through sand the drawing is always behind, you are always having to think forward into space. You also have to think about what the piece will look like when the tide comes up and also when the shadows hit it hours later.”

He loves the way people come up with their own narrative when they see his work.

“They just look at it and come up with all these stories,” he said.

Mr Plant, who is also a painter, has worked in France and Australia and will go to Iceland later this year to work with photographer Tim Nunn. There, he plans to create art on black volcanic beaches encrusted with snow and frost.

The Bermuda Beach Art Festival will be held on March 28 at beaches around the Island.

Mr Plant’s workshops will take place at Horseshoe Bay on Saturday from 3pm to 5pm and on March 24 and 25 from 5.30pm to 6.30pm.

To sign up for the festival, visit www.bermudabeachartfestival.com.

View Mr Plant’s work at www.tonyplant.co.uk.