Andrew Giddens, One Step Closer

Andrew Giddens has been out in all weathers, capturing the essence of the sea in winter. 

Gathering the flotsam and jetsam, the foam and spume by the armful, condensing them, mixing them together with lashings of memories of a childhood spent on the Lizard and adding the deep pigment that is his own spirituality, he appears to have made special paint and bottled it!

This essence of place, this perfume of salt and iodine, memories and joy is then transported back to his studio and appears on a glorious amount of canvas. 

And now the sea is crashing into the gallery.  It is not so much Beside the Wave as inside the Wave.

Not wanting to rest easy by painting what he knows is successful he has moved to a different view, exploring the beaches and coves of the Lizard, digging deep for personal memories and emotions while pushing himself as a painter, to try new things and  to perfect his technique. 

As a brand new father of a beautiful baby girl, a little sister to three lovely boys, Andrew has his hands full.  Adopting a very happy self discipline,  he gets up early and works in the mornings, leaving the afternoons for his family. 

He says that painting is his time out, a place in the day where he can meditate on the world around him and celebrate a life filled with the simple glories of a crashing wave, the cry of gulls, the chatter of children and now the sound of a newborn.

Join us in the gallery for a private view tonight from 6pm.  Then every day until May 9th.

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.

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. Markey. Lindsay. Heseltine

Markey.Lindsay.Heseltine opened on Friday 5th November with a number of art world 'movers and shakers' rating it as one of our most interesting yet. As we hoped, the three artist's works looked strong together - from Lindsay's linear style, to Heseltine's Rothko-esque virtual abstracts, and with Markey's jewel-like watercolours and nocturnes in between. This show has been designed to take Beside The Wave further in terms of the range of landscape work we represent, and to add to the critical debate about what is great in contemporary landscape painting. The exhibition continues until November 18th for anyone able to make it in person.
At what was a very lively opening, our "ace blog reporter" has made a little film to give you an impression of the show...enjoy!

Danny Markey, Phone Interview

Danny Markey paints the subjects that most of us dismiss as unremarkable, sometimes ugly, often every day.  They are the places and things of an ordinary life, suburban housing estates, a car parked at night, the glow from a television through curtains, cars on the motorway. 

If he paints a beauty spot he is more than likely to include the car air freshener hanging from the mirror or the campervan parked in front. 

The days in his paintings are often grey and possibly raining.   The nights are of darkness lit by the orange glow of street lights, or by the tail lights of cars as they snake away up anonymous roads.  He enables us to see the world around us and marvel, to relish the colours and shapes, to enjoy the ordinary.  His skill with colour and the confident brushwork is evident in every one of his paintings, they are small masterpieces

 

Danny lives in Wales with his wife and four young children, three boys and a brand new baby girl.  He admits to being a little worried that his two older boys are better artists than he is already!  His painting routine depends on where he is working as he works mostly outdoors, the routine is very dependent on subject, painting before dawn or during the night.  His studio is a converted garage at the bottom of the house, it is cheaper and easier with a young family and is useful when doing night paintings.  At the time of this interview however he was dealing with a flood due to the Welsh rain! When he is studio based he uses drawings and outdoor paintings as source material.  He prefers to listen to radio 4 which, he says, makes better background as he finds music is too intrusive for working with.

He uses oil and watercolours  by Michael Harding or Old Holland  from Jacksons Art Supplies .  A box made by his father, artist Peter Markey, to work outdoors which opens to create a laptop pallet and a place to slot paintings.  At night he uses a miners LED light around his neck.  Everything is designed to fit into a rucksack.  He works all year round in all weathers!   If he is not working directly outdoors he might well be working in his car. 

Danny doesn't have a grand plan, he says it is simply about muddling along.  Painting for him is as necessary as breathing, he cannot live without it and if he stops painting he begins to feel unwell.

With his paintings he makes a celebration of life, apparently from nothing.  Then gives it to us, the viewers, not on a plate but on a piece of board or paper.  There is no fuss or fanfare, we can take it or leave it, it is simply what he does and, in doing that, we are the richer for it.

Visiting Alasdair Lindsay's Studio

Step inside a small terrace house in Hayle and you have stepped into one of Alasdair Lindsay's paintings.  The colours are the colours of the late fifties and the early sixties. 

Soft teal, muted pink and ochre are shot with an earthy orange.  Angle poise lamps peer over beautiful retro cups on top of fifties style place mats.  Moulded orange chairs sit around the table and an astonishing collection of vintage surf boards are stacked where most people keep their books. 

Alasdair is a self confessed hoarder and collector, he says he gets it from his grandmother.  he finds his treasures at car boot sales and junk shops.

His studio is in a sturdy shed at the bottom of his garden.  Having a very young family he finds a studio at home useful as he can fit work around the schedule imposed by small children.  He usually paints while his eldest daughter is at school. 

He works from sketches done on location and sketchbooks full of his distinctive linear sketches are stacked in his studio.  He prefers to use these and memory as the basis for a painting.

He says he finds actually starting a painting the most difficult part  Beginning with a coloured ground, this is his way of breaking the ice, he then uses masking tape to make lines and patterns on the colour to break it up.  This forms the commencement of a long process of thin glazes of colour, masking out shapes, more painting and finally a kind of "editing" where he thins out the painting, taking away shapes and elements until he is satisfied with the composition that remains.

Alasdair's paintings are very carefully considered, at first glance they appear to be very neat flat planes of colour but look closer and you can see the interesting brush work and thin layers going to make up a pallet that is strongly represented by the objects he surrounds himself with. 

While working he listens to LP records played on a record player beside the easel. 

On the shelf sits a toy batman boat beside a Dynamo label maker and a lovely old lamp.   

Another shed is literally stuffed with a forest of angle poise lamps and surf boards, he tells me that he sorted out his studio before my visit.  These are usually all around him while he paints.  

It is no wonder that his paintings contain the lines and colours of another era.  That, combined with the unusual viewpoints that he depicts, seems to  bestow a serenity onto the paintings, lifting the mundane, and often overlooked, up onto an altogether higher level.  As if the paintings are taking the viewer back to a carefree time, an era when we had time to stop and stare at the patterns made by a crane or a shadow of a boat, or when the shapes of some dried grasses reminded us of our childhood curtains. 

Alasdair Lindsay has made a world of his own through his paintings and one that he is generous enough to share.

Visiting Miles Heseltine's Studio

In the middle of Penzance, tucked in among the old pubs, houses and shops, is the building that once was the  telephone exchange.  We go in through the front doors, up echoing stairways, through empty hall ways and down a maze of corridors until we reach an unassuming door.  Miles finds the keys and opens up a studio that is truly a reflection of the passion and conviction that goes into his paintings. 

It is a tall light filled room with paintings in various stages up on the walls.  Drawings abound, all over the room, high up near the ceilings,  the gestural and passionate mark making is everywhere.  Dark charcoal lines, dashes and dots, black shapes describe a landscape, roof tops or a church spire, all of them half seen, as if the artist is aware of them but is looking beyond, or looking further.

There is a pallet on the floor with the blood of many paintings, reminiscent of a crime scene, evidence of a strongly emotional style of making work. 

There is also a camping stove and a kettle, matches spent and littering the floor.  Shelves of books about other artists are near a paint splattered sink.  In the other corner several battered boxes hold very old taxidermy subjects, a moth eaten otter and a strange water bird. 

There is nothing neat or pretty about this studio, it is about the work and about the strong ambition that Miles has for himself as an artist, a personal inner drive. He wants to destroy the wall between drawing and painting, they are to be the same.

He doesn't have a fixed routine, arriving to paint sometimes before dawn, working nonstop for several hours before allowing himself space from the work.  He has a process that he calls pruning where older canvasses are culled, scraped off and reused or destroyed. 

When working  in the landscape he uses large sheets of paper with charcoal, making the occasional little film, which he will later use as part of the process for a painting.  He can't work from photographs as he says they take over too much. 

Paintings start life on the floor, he walks around them, "Pollack style" and later they go up onto the walls for further work.  His response to the landscape is personal and meditational, something may have caught his eye, through a clouded window, against a hazy sun, shapes in a velvet night, branches in the snow, all are re written in the hieroglyphics of a secret language.

 

It is a deeply personal space, somewhere that it was a privilege to be allowed to see because Miles Heseltine is a private kind of man, quiet, almost shy, but one who obviously strips his soul bare to transcribe his response to the landscape around him in deep paint and raw canvas, torn through with the powerful, and all important, marks of drawing.

Maritime Museum

Thomson "Celebration" in No.2 Docks
660mm x 1020mm, oil on canvas

"Thompson "Celebration" in No 2 Docks" by John Raynes

will be included in the exhibition. 150 Years of Falmouth Docks at the Maritime Museum, Falmouth from 2 Dec – 30 March

The Maritime Museum  will be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of Falmouth Docks with this special exhibition.  Falmouth has been used as a harbour for over 2,000 years and the docks have been an industrial hub since their creation in the mid-19th Century.  Through models, film, objects, paintings and stunning photography the exhibition explores this fascinating history, with a special focus on the Dock’s heyday in the 1950s.



Falmouth Docks courtesy of the David Barnicoat collection

 For our exhibition last year, "Industrial Cornwall" Raynes has made several stunning works about Falmouth docks.  The tangle of metal, buildings and boats providing a wonderful foil for his skills as artist and draftsman.


Dry Dock, Falmouth
350mm x 470mm, pencil on paper



Under Crane
350mm x 300mm, oil on canvas



Visiting Andrew Giddens Studio

Arriving at Andrew Giddens studio is like walking through one of his paintings.  Across the beach with the headland bleached out by surf spray.  Up the winding cliff path, salt in the air and the sound of crashing waves. Through a gap in the hedge and into a modest shed perched high on the cliffs.

There is nothing fanciful about this studio, this is an honest and straightforward working space.  It is very peaceful and calm.  The windows are open allowing the sound of the surf far below to mingle with the sound of wild birds attracted by the abundant blackberries that graze the walls of the building.

There is a large easel  with a painting of Porthleven in progress.  Paint, in the soft greys and subtle yellows of his paintings,  covers everything,  

the old office chair could have been upholstered by Jackson Pollock.

There is a table laden with tubes of oil paint in various stages of use, some are split open to use the last scrapings, a pallet, which appears to be an old bread board has transformed into a grey, three dimensional landscape.  He uses Old Holland oil paint because the high pigment content makes them useful for glazing, Daler Rowney because of the buttery texture.  There are very few brushes as he says he forgets to clean them and so he prefers to paint with a knife and his fingers.

Sketchbooks lie open on the floor beside a comfortable arm chair with glimpses of vigorous drawings and new blank canvasses are stacked by the walls ready to be transformed into Andrews atmospheric paintings.

Andrew has worked here for four years, his working day starts at 8.30 and he paints until about 1pm.  Although he sometimes breaks this habit to give his three boys their maths or science lessons.  In the afternoon he has time with the boys, walking on the beach and exploring the stretch of coastline that is home to them. 

This family time seems to be one of the fundamental elements of Andrew as an artist as he explains more about his painting methods. 

The relationship that he has with a place is intimately bound together with memories and experiences.  Time spent with the important people in his life is wound, with paint, into the beauty of the scenes that he depicts.  He finds it almost impossible to paint somewhere until his children have run across the sand, or he has walked along the cliff paths and they have spent many happy hours exploring together.  He can paint places that he knew well in his childhood and places that he is discovering with his own children now.   

I suspect that if you wanted Andrew to paint your favourite beach you would have to take him on holiday with you for quite a few years!

There is nothing fanciful about Andrew as an artist, like his studio, he is honest and straightforward.  He paints what he sees and it seems as if he sees with his heart wide open.