Affordable Art Fair.

Been there, done that and most definitely got the tee shirt!
Cat Whitworth ( gallery staff and expert picture hanger ) and I, Sarah Wimperis ( artist, van driver and trying very hard to do as I am told) drove a van load of precious art works, carefully up to Bristol on the morning of Wednesday 11th.
The rest of the gallery staff had been working hard organising, cataloguing, wrapping and planning for months and were there to help us load the van but once we set off we were on our own.  We had a truck stop, like all good van drivers should, and managed to time our arrival in Bristol perfectly.
Then the hard work began.
We unloaded 90 paintings, tool boxes and one very heavy desk in just under one hour...

and began to hang.

Cat had a very well thought out hanging plan and by 4pm on the Thursday we were ready for the private view.  The pictures looked beautiful, colours flowed from one to the other, shapes were echoed and even horizon lines appeared to follow from one artists work right into the next.  I was impressed but then I shouldn't have been surprised as each exhibition at Beside the Wave is beautifully thought out.

The following three days were a blur of talking about the artists and the paintings.  Miles Heseltines' work sold very well and had at least two very emotional responses, which is a rare and fine thing.

Our fellow exhibitors were a very friendly and helpful crowd and we all had a thoroughly exuberant party on Saturday night.
Sunday was a rehang and then selling paintings. 
We met some old friends of the gallery and hopefully a lot of new ones and although it was an exhausting way to spend the weekend we both really enjoyed it.

Andrew Giddens - Colours of the Morning

 I met up with Andrew Giddens on the beach that is the inspiration for his third solo show at Beside The Wave.  His little boys climbed and played as he got out his sketch book to look into the light and make notes and sketches for another painting.

 He explained that it is the early morning that the new exhibition is about.  The birth of a new day, before there are footsteps in the sand, when the world is as it has been since it all began.  The sun, a blaze of glorious light.  Waves like luminous ribbons twisted from many colours.  This is what he paints and here is where he paints it.  It is a beach that he knows intimately and the arrangement of distant cliff and crag are as lovingly depicted as a family portrait.

He has become fascinated by the reflections in wet sand and thinks that as he works his paintings are becoming more abstract.  Indeed close up they appear as a woven tapestry of many layers of colour and yet when viewed from a few paces back they become perfect representations of light and water.  The clean promise of a new day shines from these canvases. 
As we finished talking his little boys leap from their rocky climbing and run off across the beach, which reminds me of how fresh and lovely it is to see the pure childlike joy that is in all of Andrew's work and what a rare and precious thing that is.
Go and see for yourself, breathe in the fresh, ozone rich, air of a new day and enjoy the work of Andrew Giddens.
The exhibition opens on Friday 13th with a private view at 6pm and continues until Wednesday 25th of May.

Two Artists

Two of our artists appear in the 300th edition, June 2011, of the Artists and Illustrators magazine.  Andrew Tozer work in progress for his exhibition in June and Richard Tuff talks about why he enjoys working in gouache.

Bristol Here We Come!

 We are loading up the van with beautiful paintings on Wednesday and hitting the road to travel up to Bristol for the Affordable Art Fair where we will be showing ten of our artists:
Andrew Giddens, Miles Heseltine, Mike Hindle, Alasdair Lindsay, John Raynes, Simon Stooks, Richard Stanley, Andrew Tozer Richard Tuff and Sarah Wimperis.
The private view is 6pm - 9pm on Thursday 12th May, invitation only, and the art fair is open Friday 11 am - 8 pm, Saturday 11am - 6 pm and Sunday 11 am - 5 pm.

If you are in the Bristol area we would love to see you, gallery staff will be Cat Whitworth and Sarah Wimperis, we are on stand E11.

You may have noticed a new name amongst our artists, Richard Stanley.  His colourful expressive paintings of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are an exciting addition to the gallery.

John Raynes

John Raynes stretches his own canvas as he thinks the basic materials with which he makes his work should be of the best quality.  The stretcher frames are made of hard wood and the canvas is fine primed linen.  This short film is John in his studio stretching a canvas.

Mike Hindle at Work

Short Films Of Some of Our Artists

We have been putting together a few short (very short) films of some of our artists, working or talking about their work.  This first one is of  Sarah Wimperis, painting en plein air down beside the Helford River.

Spring!

Come for a Spring walk with us this month. From April 9th Spring is celebrated at the gallery with a mixed exhibition of some of our most popular artists.

Flowers burst forth from Roy Goodman's canvasses.

Paul Lewin lets us leap visually from cliff tops into sparkling seas.

Mike Hindle wanders across almost empty beaches

while John Raynes gives us the many faces of Cornwall with pretty  harbours,  wild rocky outcrops and secret woodland places.

Sarah Wimperis has wandered through woods and found flower pickers harvesting the daffodils

while Andrew Tozer has soaked up the early spring sunshine and poured it into beautiful light filled paintings.

Debbie George has gathered simple treasures and painted a nature table of riches.

The catalogue is online now and catalogue peices are available to purchase now. 

The full collection will be online from Saturday 9th April and available to purchase from 10am.

Something for everyone. 

Visit the gallery to see these and many other paintings along with beautiful ceramics and stunning jewellery.  The show runs from 10am on Saturday 9th of April until Wednesday 27th of April.

Benjamin Warner Private View.

The Studio of Benjamin Warner

I just found the artist J.M. Whistler! He is alive and well and living in Cornwall. He is 177 years old, given up being a dandy and working hard but there must be some kind of alchemy going on. Perhaps a painting in the attic because he doesn't look much over 40, and his mother was painting the front door!

It actually took me ages to find Benjamin Warners studio. I followed tracks, talked to farmers and was directed across fields, went along lanes and ran away with some gypsies.  However, when I finally got there,  my journey had not been in vain.  An old farm building houses his studio, we go in through what could be a tractor shed, he has plans for that bit, a bigger space for bigger paintings. Then through another door which opens into a long room which is very clean and neat.  It is a new studio for Benjamin and I suspect will soon have the scars of vigorous painting written large all over it for , as I look around,  I am intrigued to see that everything has a patina. 

The old Apple computer in the corner is covered in paint, the same spotty paint design covers all the books on the book shelves.

A huge collection of music arranged into big black folders has similar markings.  Two pots look as if they are hewn from granite hold some brushes soaking in turps, upon closer inspection they once were old earthenware jars.

A vast collection of brushes lie in waiting and two sheets of heavy glass are clean and waiting to be used as pallets.

Paintings rest against the walls, like  frames  from a dream film,  half remembered upon waking.  The misty evocative scenes, seascape, landscape, townscape, seem to come from another age until you realise that there is a crane, or boat with an outboard, or a skyline that you recognise.  Somehow, the images created appear to have been excavated, wrought out of a long memory, a find of sorts from an archaeological dig. 

I like this feeling of time travel and ask some silly questions, a bit like a teen magazine reporter:

What's your favourite colour? "Dark" 

When is your favourite time of day "Evening or first light" 

Who are your favourite painters, "Whistler, for his pallet and his technique, not his portraits.  Turner, his later work, his experimental work"

How do you do these paintings?  The technique can't be explained easily.  He spends a long time learning his subject, being there, absorbing the effects of light, feeling the changes in temperature, the nuances of mist and fog.  Making notes, and sketches, finding out when the light is right for what he wants, when the falling night has taken away just enough detail to render a familiar  scene almost on the edge of being abstract.  Then with this knowledge he wrestles the painting out.  Painting on, scraping back, glazing in and rubbing out, massaging the paint onto the canvas staining the picture into another existence.

Benjamin paints for a while as I take some pictures, I feel privileged to have had a slight insight into how these timeless paintings are made.  They are beautiful, woven, deep and dark, full of mystery and suspense.  They feel like "real" paintings, made by a "real" artist.  Paintings out of time.  Now to find that portrait in the attic!

Interview by Sarah Wimperis.

Private View. Amanda Hoskin.

A Meeting With Amanda Hoskin.

Amanda Hoskin works in a large, light wooden building at the bottom of a garden in Par. Inside it is warm and bright, white walls and cupboards and paintings in various stages of completion.

The first thing to catch my eye was a collection of tiny canvasses with, what appeared to be, butterflies stuck to them.  These exquisite little works of art are made using Amanda's characteristic painterly style, collage and wonderful colour sense, a little gold leaf, and butterflies that she has painted onto fine ivorine, cut out and then collaged into the work.

They are so beautifully painted that I had to look very closely to make sure that they were actually made and not pinned. 

I am to include this disclaimer: "No butterflies have been harmed in the creating of this exhibition" 

I wanted to know why she has chosen gardens as the subject for this next exhibition:  Not wanting to be type cast as "that artist who paints the Cornish coast", she decided to explore gardens.  There is a wealth of wonderful gardens in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.  She admits to being initially worried that this would result in a lot of green paintings but as soon as she began to explore the subject she became hooked.

Naturally butterflies have flown into the picture.  They are beautiful but rather more importantly, she reminds me, is the vital role that these jewel like creatures play, along with bees, in our survival on this planet. Which is why the entire proceeds from the sale of one exhibition painting are to be donated to the British Butterfly Conservation Society. 

With the same energy and passion that was evident in her coastal walk and the resulting paintings, Amanda has quite literally gone down the garden path.  She has spent hours in gardens, public gardens, tiny back gardens, allotments and orchards absorbing the scents, sounds and textures, making small paintings, working her sketchbooks and gathering information.

She returns to the studio and paints in oils, on paper, wood or canvas. Whatever suits the painting, she is, I think, an instinctive painter.  Using pallet knives, her fingers and brushes, but brushes as tools to "stab the canvas" rather than to paint with, she weaves the colours. A huge collection of very well used, sturdy paint filled brushes sit on the window sill next to a big pallet and a lot of paint.

As we talk she begins to work the sky on the easel painting.  Mixing paint with a pallet knife and applying it to the painting she then begins to use her fingers, coaxing the soft greys into the right kind of light, she almost looks as if she is conducting the weather, there does seem to be a tiny bit of magic going on.

Amanda's paintings are many layered, skies are first filled with delicate layers of subtle tones, worked and smoothed with quick fine fingers. Then paint is applied with the brush-tools, flicked, smeared and splattered, layer upon layer until a dense undergrowth of colour and texture is created.  Paper, words and precious gold leaf are often employed, all working together to recreate the gardens and landscapes that now seem to contain dreams and memories as well as trees and flowers.

Her sketchbooks are works of art in their own right, valuable note books, filled with drawings and beautiful little paintings, colour studies and experiments, seed packets, textures from a magazine, sweet wrappers and labels, words and thoughts, finger painting, watercolours and oils mixed and mingled into a delightful inspirational cake. 
These are what inform her paintings.  It is these paintings which must be seen to be appreciated, I can honestly say that if you like Amanda's paintings in the catalogue or on the web site you are going to love them when you see them in real life.  They are richly textured, deeply layered, beautifully considered and an honest, heartfelt response to a place and a time.

Amanda's paintings are feminine, soft and beautiful.  They are a testament to the natural world, Cornwall and the isles of Scilly.  They look lovely but there is also an undercurrent, like a hidden message, someone telling you in a half remembered dream: "Don't mess with this beautiful world, treasure it, layer it with gold and precious colours and lay it out, without a word, for everyone to see."   That is just what she has done.

Private View. Andrew Tozer

Meeting Andrew Tozer

Imagine an artist; he is sitting beneath a growling grey sky, absorbed by the cloud shapes, the changes in the light, the nuances of colour on a wet road,  unperturbed by the imminent rain.  In your mind's eye he returns to a garret and feverishly commutes the day from sketches and plein air studies into a larger painting. 

He could be Monet or any one of the Impressionist artists of the nineteenth century.  He isn't because he is sitting next to you on the beach, or parked up in his car, watching your world and painting it.

Andrew Tozer lives and breathes art.  He is the embodiment of a tradition that demands skills like drawing and an understanding of form and tone.    He is an artist born out of time.  Gone is the aggressive attitude of the past decade of young British artists, nowhere to be heard is the response "it is art because I say it is" and the only blank canvasses you will find in his studio are ones waiting to be painted upon.

Andrew constantly challenges himself, questioning whether he will be able to capture that fleeting moment, the wind on the water, the movement of masts in the rain.  He works hard for his art and his studio is testament to that.  It is a garret, an attic room in his home, reached by a perilous ladder from his children's bedroom, it is as unassuming as a studio as Andrew is as an artist.  He paints because he has to.  He has a need to absorb and record, more excited by a grey rainy day than by brilliant sunshine and blue skies.  Distracted by rain caught in headlamps while driving at night.  His pallet is of a few carefully chosen colours, a lot of greys at the moment although I suspect that is because it is winter.  

His paintings are so deeply rooted in the moment his working pallet reflects that.  Also because he is so practised at plein air painting not only is he able to absorb and reproduce a fleeting moment of light but also he seems to be able to do the same with the emotional response.  His boats clink in the breeze, the water moves, the rain is wet and children play on the beach, it seems hugely possible to hear their distant voices.

He grew up in Cornwall wandering across beaches, through woodlands and along creeks as a child of farming family with a mother who is also an artist.  The passion for painting Cornwall is an easy marriage, this is where he is at home and where his natural responses began and continue.

After moving to London to study illustration he quickly realised that he was a painter rather than an illustrator although the training in the craft of drawing and composition is evident in every single painting he does.  He is a keeper of sketchbooks and it is possible to evidence his paintings right back to the first quick sketches.

His book shelves are bulging with sketchbooks full of his own drawings and books of all shapes and sizes full of the work of artists that he admires.  His influences are many, Fred Cuming, Joaquin Sorolla, William Nicholson, Claude Monet, Pierre Bonnard, all of them recorders of the everyday, masters of light and lion tamers of paint.

Andrew is an artist who believes in learning, learning how to see, learning how to speak visually and never resting, never relying on the fact that he is already a master of what he does but constantly reaching further. His work is much admired and collected although, when I was talking with him, his most treasured compliments were from a group of young art students and some primary school children.  "We really like your work"  And indeed, we do!

His new and exciting exhibition will open with a private view on Thursday 27th January 6pm till 8pm and will continue until Saturday 5th February.  Don't miss it!

Art Magazines

Andrew Giddens appears in two UK Art Magazines this month.
Artist & Illustrators magazine has a feature about Andrew and his work towards his exhibition at Beside the Wave in May.

Leisure Painter magazine has a three page interview with Andrew discussing his working methods and his inspiration.

We are all looking forward to his next exhibition to enjoy Andrew's uniquely personal view of Cornwall.

Here's to a wonderful 2011!

Firstly, a big thank you to all of you who chose to celebrate Christmas and New Year with paintings, jewellery and ceramics from Beside The Wave - it has been lovely to see you or speak to you all, and it is always great to be able to have good news for artists in the New Year.

We have lots planned for 2011, starting with the opening of a new gallery space upstairs and a refurbishment of the main gallery downstairs. Undetectable (almost) from the calm and convivial gallery floor, is fevered activity behind the scenes as space is opened up, collections are rationalised, carpets are ordered and decoraters and tradesmen lined up and ready for action. As you can see work upstairs is already in progress.. ...and Josie is now a slip of her former self owing to the number of times she has been up and down from the first floor to the basement, so watch this space, you may see her flash past!!!

Happy Christmas

Own Art

Do you know about Own Art Loans?  Have you thought about Own Art Loans? 

These are interest free loans which can really help spread the cost of buying  a painting that you have fallen in love with.  They are repayable in 10 monthly instalments and as they are completely interest free you never pay more than the advertised price.

Here are a few examples:   This gorgeous painting by Paul Lewin could be yours, to enjoy every day, to transport you to a cliff top perch on Gwennap Head.  And that could be possible for just  £99.50 per month, for 10 monthly payments.  ( That is approximately £24 per week or £3.42 per day.)

Or this beautiful little painting by Debbie George could be yours for £20 per month, or £5.00 per week or 71pence per day. 

You could own an Amanda Hoskin for £55 per month for 10 months

Or a put a wonderful , joyful Emma Dunbar on your walls for £140 per month for 10 months

You can apply for as little as £100 or as much as £2,000 for the purchase of original works of art by living artists in any media including paintings, sculpture, ceramics, glassware, and artist made jewellery.

The gallery is open until 8pm today, Thursday, for the last late night shopping before Christmas. Tomorrow it is Christmas Eve and we are open until 3pm.  After the big day and Boxing Day we open again through to the New Year, all the times are on our web site.