Battersea Affordable Art Fair here we come

All packed up and on their way to London,

Paintings by...Chris Rigby,

Andrew Tozer,

Sarah Wimperis,

Miles Heseltine,

Paul Wadsworth,

 

and Ashley Hold

some amazing paintings and truly delicious framing:

Hope to see you there, you can still download half price tickets from our web site.

Miles Heseltine : Western Approaches.

Boscawen Un
1050mm x 2200mm, charcoal on paper £1750

To experience the landscape of West Penwith is to experience the raw elemental power of our island home.  It is not difficult to imagine ancient Celtic shaman finding spiritual places and areas to construct their megalithic structures and to connect to their world. 
Most of us have wandered about in these old places, touching a stone and musing for a moment on the ways of the old religions and our distant ancestors. Afterwards returning to our busy lives, the wild moorland just a flicker on our TV screen of memories. 
Miles Heseltine however seems able to capture the very essence of place, like an alchemist he condenses and recreates the energy and resonance of this powerful landscape.

Hawthorn at Ding Dong
500mm x 1000mm, oil on canvas £1250

Stone circles and burial chambers, church towers and mine workings all point towards rain grey skies as markers of the human spirit.  Hawthorn trees bend against the wind like huddled figures. 
Heseltine has taken oil paint and made places speak, taken charcoal and graphite and given the elements a song.  Magnificent drawings wrought within the landscape itself spread their arms across the walls of rooms and bring the land home with us. 
There is no mystic misty fakery about these paintings, no new age magic, this is the real thing.  An honest, uncompromising response to a beautiful, elemental landscape that speaks across millenia to our ancient memories.

Nine Maidens, Boskendan
        1150mm x 2250mm, charcoal on paper £1750

Reproductions  cannot do this work justice, it has to be experienced.  Let yourself go and allow the paintings and drawings talk to you, just as Miles Heseltine has allowed the landscape to inhabit him.

The exhibition is displayed in our newly refurbished gallery from the 11th until the 23rd of January...and it is magnificent.

Mine Working at Ding Dong
400mm x 400mm, oil on canvas £550



Preparations for London

 We are getting ready for Battersea Affordable Art Fair so the upstairs gallery is a confusion of lists, bags and paintings.  There is organisation buried deep within the bubble wrap...honestly!

 If you look at the top picture you can see two very long wrapped works of art, they are magnificent drawings by Miles Heseltine, one of which is already sold and coming up to London with us in the van.  The only problem is how to get them out of the upper gallery, down the windy staircase and round a corner into the lower gallery and into the van.  They are nearly 3 meters long!

 So its all hands on deck...out of the upper gallery, out of the window onto one flat roof...

Everyone out onto the roof, get a ladder down to the next flat roof and lower the paintings down...

 Paintings safely onto the second flat roof, one of us pops back into the gallery and runs down stairs out of the front and down the side alley while the other two begin to lower the paintings down to the next level...

 Into the alley below...

 Then they dash back up the ladders and back into the back window, down the stairs and out of the front door, round the back and we all carry the paintings into the front of the gallery.

 Its all in a days work for our fantastic gallery team.

If you are in or around London next week, 25th to 28th please come and visit us on stand H5 at the Affordable Art Fair, you will be able to see one of these beautiful drawings and much more, and now you know what lengths we go to in the name of art!

All At Sea

We have a beautiful exhibition on show in our upstairs gallery and at the National Maritime Museum until 6th February.
Six of our artists, Heseltine, Hoskin, Jones, Lindsay, Tozer and Wimperis have explored Cornwall's relationship with the sea and discussed, in paint, what it means to them.

From the cluttered workshops and boat yards to empty fish markets and working quaysides Sarah Wimperis has chosen the working face of Cornwall.  Andrew Tozer has gazed across the bay and described the beautiful sparkling light and the shapes of sails, which so often grace his work, giving us a Tozeresque splash of salt water.

Al Lindsay has applied his slightly retro vision to talk about quaysides and harbours with perfect colours and graphic shapes.

Robert Jones, who worked as a fisherman years ago, has gone back to his roots and taken us on a trip out to sea where little boats are buffeted beneath endless skies.

Amanda Hoskin allows us to drift through summer flowers on Cornwall's clifftops, or glimpse the twinkling lights of home from out at sea.

Miles Heseltine has gone out onto the cliff tops with enormous sheets of paper and exposed the soul of Cornwall's granite heart in powerful gestural charcoal drawings that must be seen to be truly appreciated.

It makes for a facinating exhibition, full of contrasts and tasting salty and of the sea.  All of the work can be viewed on our website.

Catalogue for Chelsea Art Fair

We will be at Chelsea Art Fair, Chelsea Old Town Hall, Kings Road, London SW3 5EE.  On Stand 35.  Friday 20th April - Sunday 22nd April.  There is a Preview on Thursday 19th April, 4pm - 9pm (invitation only).
If you would like tickets please contact the gallery.  We would love to see you there.  If you click on the catalogue above you can see the work that we will be taking with us.  There is new work especially for Chelsea from Anne-Marie Butlin, Amanda Hoskin, Richard Tuff and Sarah Wimperis.  Previously unseen work from Chris Rigby.  Lovely pieces from the Effortless Brushstrokes exhibition and a selection of very exciting sculpture.
This fair we will be taking a browser containing mounted but unframed original paintings, drawings and etchings by Miles Heseltine, John Howard, Chris Rigby and Sarah Wimperis, which is an opportunity to get your self some georgous art at a lower price.
All of the work is available with the own art scheme, smashing the price into ten, interest free, monthly repayments, so you could have a painting for as little as £10 per month!
If you see anything that you fall in love with it is available to buy now, from the gallery.
Enjoy the catalogue and hopefully we will see you in London, if nothing else it is an excellent chance to see some of our best work in the "flesh" and have a chat with Ingrid Heseltine and Sarah Wimperis who will be staffing our stand.

Effortless Brushstrokes

Alachai Mor V
1025 x 1220 mm
by Chris Rigby

Opening tonight, a very exciting mixed exhibition of truly awe inspiring paintings.  This is the launch of our second year of collaboration with Falmouth Art Gallery.  Fourteen of our artists are represented in this show with one major piece each being exhibited at Falmouth Art Gallery in an exhibition inspired by John Singer Sargent, whose maxim was "to convey the maximum with the minimum of effort."  In other words a display of breathtaking skill, apparently effortless, unquestionably stunning.
The show runs until April 14th and is surely not to be missed.
Here is a little taster...

Tresco Trees
365 x 605mm
by Neil Pinkett

Woodland II (May)
1000 x 1000mm
by Miles Heseltine

Lead The Way and Dance
605 x 505mm
by Paul Wadsworth

Garden Pots
215 x 215
by Sarah Wimperis

London Affordable Art Fair

We are getting good at this!  Having done the Affordable Art Fair in Bristol in May we felt much more confident as we drove the trusty van along the scenic route, via Dorset and the New Forest, to London.  Obviously an artist's route!  It was our first time at the Affordable Art Fair in London. 
Arriving, unloading and hanging is very hard work but we hit the deadline of 3pm on the Wednesday ready for the press, it was a bit like changing rooms, and our stand looked fantastic.  We all felt very proud of our artists and the work that we were showing.

Miles Heseltine had done some wonderful new paintings, his work attracted a lot of attention and many red dots. Sarah Wimperis and Andrew Tozer also sold extreamly well. Indeed, the influence of a Summer of Contempoary Impressionisim at the Gallery was apparent in their work and hugely appreciated by collectors.

Roy Goodman's evolving style and fresh colours were much commented on. Sarah Wimperis developed a fantastic selling plan which involved buying ceramics from other stands and then believing that this would help sell her own work.  It worked!  She also managed to very succesfully represented the other artists as well!!

Our stand was resplendant with a catalogue on an iPad and QR codes and a book full of red dots. We met up with a lot of our London based collectors and many new ones.
Now armed with even more Art Fair confidence we are heading for Edinburgh Art Fair in November, only three weeks away, paint, artists...paint!

Four Artists



Miles Heseltine Woodland II (sold)

 Opening this Saturday at 10am a collection of new paintings by four of our artists. Miles Hesletine, Myles Oxenford, Benjamin Warner and Andrew Giddens.  All four artists are exhibiting their own response to the world around them, embodying the sentiments of the impressionist movement. 

Miles Heseltine.  Woodland IV

Miles Heseltine has four stunning paintings of woodland.  Bristling with energy and almost exploding with emotion, beautifully simple yet full of depth these little paintings take you by the hand, right into the woods and almost shove you headlong into the bluebells.  They are quite beautiful and as you may be able to tell, have taken my breath away.  They really need to be seen, in person as the strong scribing marks that break the surface of the paint cry out to be studied closely.

Benjamin Warner. Winter View from my Studio towards Stithians Reservoir

Benjamin Warner has been to London and produced beautiful atmospheric paintings of the Thames at night.  As well as the end of day river pieces, there are two exquisite landscapes, the view from his studio, one with the sky like battered lead bent over fields barely scraped with snow. 
His paintings, as usual, seemingly simple but upon closer inspection revealing intricate layers of oil paint thrown and scraped and painted with such skill that the resulting paintings hang on the walls with the confidence and presence of an old master.

Benjamin Warner.  February Morning towards Truro.

Myles Oxenford's paintings are fresh, delicate and gentle.  Capturing the ephemeral quality of the dawn or the ending of the day in such a way that, when looking at them, I seem to hear the distant call of a lapwing.  Really lovely paintings with the tidal waters of the creeks running the eye up to a beautifully rendered horizon of ancient oaks and that sharp line of light caught on the very edge of the water.

Myles Oxenford.  Dawn Perranaworthal.

After standing back and resting your mind in this dawn and twilight world step closer and admire the masterful application of thin layers of carefully chosen colours that go to show such tranquil scenes.  Certainly a balm for the soul in such a mad world.

Andrew Giddens.  Rinsey Sunshine.

Finally there is a collection of new paintings by Andrew Giddens.  Rolling surf and blinding sunlight, woven colours let the huge splendour of the Cornish sea pour off the canvas, if you are a fan of this very popular artist then you will love this set of paintings.  Andrew's colours gush forth and his love for the spirituality found at the edge of the land are very apparent in his work.