Ben Warner Special Collection

Sailing, Falmouth Bay
155mm x 245mm, oil on board
SOLD

We have been showing a collection of new works by Ben Warner over the last week and, I am happy to report very busy selling them.  The painting above was tiny and absolutely exquisite.
There are still a few left on the walls if you want to wander along to the gallery and have a look.  He is an artist whose work has the most mesmerising atmosphere and beautiful depth.

Falmouth Docks
180mm x 265mm, oil on board
£695

Timeless pieces full of a glowing luminous light, suggested shapes giving the familiar skyline of Falmouth a new aspect.

Greenbank towards Falmouth Docks
380mm x 640mm, oil on board
£1250

 

They really benefit from viewing in person as the layers of paint, washed back and worked up to produce a wonderful patina, are fascinating in themselves.

Early Evening, Falmouth Docks
720mm x 770mm, oil on board
£1750

If you cant visit the gallery, you can visit our website where you are able to browse and purchase with one click. We deliver world-wide and can gift wrap anything!  Own Art, the brilliant interest free credit system, can help spread the cost of a painting and can be completed over the phone.

Benjamin Warner

Distant Perspectives

Benjamin Warner's new exhibition is the second in the Effortless Brustrokes collection of shows. 
He has produced a wonderful collection of epic paintings.  Cornwall appears as if shrouded in a timeless mist, one that blurs the present day with vistas from another age.   Truro cathedral rises out of the landscape and seems to be in a time before it was even built.

 

Familiar places are seen with fresh eyes and a different soul has evolved from beneath the artists brush. Turf, heather and winter grass are conjured up out of pigment and oil. The smallest of brushstrokes becomes a house or a path across the moor.  There is a great mastery of medium apparent in this body of work.

Benjamin Warner allows us a view of Cornwall that is both new and yet as old as the Cheesewring its self.  
The exhibition is well worth a visit and will be on show at the gallery from Friday 24th until Wednesday March 7th.

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.

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.