Wimperis, Hoskin and Helford

Sarah Wimperis and Amanda Hoskin continue the Contemporary Impressionism series of exhibitions, at Beside The Wave, with their own individual visions of the Helford River.
In this, Sarah's first major collection for Beside The Wave, works include the Helford (where she lives) come rain or shine, exquisite portraits of gardens and a rich collection of paintings from Sarah's recent visit to Provence - a welcome reminder of what a sun-drenched summer really looks like.  

Wimperis. Low Tide, Polwheveral Creek



Hoskin. Misty Day, Helford.



Meanwhile, with her epic painting journey around Cornwall done, Amanda has found inspiration further inland around the Helford River. In painting the Helford for the very first time Amanda has sought to capture the essence of the river throughout the year.

Paintings are made by coaxing misty shapes out of the paint, using her fingers and splattering subtle colours onto the canvas. Amanda often paints from memory or from sketch books and studies made outdoors working to create and communicate the spirit of place.

Sarah paints as much as she can en plein air, or out there, in the rain, mist and sun, completing entire works of art outdoors. Her work seeks out strong colours, deep shadows and brilliant light, and she will often painting into the light ("contre jour") from the creek side or from her floating studio out in the river.

 

Sarah Wimperis and her floating studio


 For both Amanda Hoskin and Sarah Wimperis, the challenges of painting Cornwall in the winter, misty and moody with lush greens and subtle greys, and Cornwall in the summer, hazy sunshine, hot colours against deep cool shadows have produced breathtaking collections of work. And unsurprisingly, from the same stimulus of the Helford River each has such different and refreshing responses - which of course is part of what the joy of art is all about. Unique ways of seeing and utterly individual ways of voicing them.
 

Hoskin.  Rain Clouds over the Field.  Helford.



Wimperis.  Hazy Helford



Sarah, meanwhile, has also spent some time this summer in Provence, painting en plein air and has filled the gallery with paintings of blue Provencal skies, terracotta walls and purple shadows and of course Lavender.

Sarah and painting kit in Provence

Here you can see the process of painting, but you can't sadly hear the cicadas or feel the hot sun but clearly much of that has seeped into the paintings!!!


Wimperis.  Shadow Shed



Wimperis.  Lavender Stripes.

Anyway, it's now time to go and hang these paintings on the wall so they can be there for all to enjoy!
This exhibition opens on Saturday 6th August and continues until Thursday 18th August.

Emma Dunbar


The gallery is filled with a joyous burst of colour.  Lovely paintings grace the walls each one like a secret scrap book full of experience, memory and musing. Collections of things arranged and rearranged, sorted and saved.  At once both thoughtfully intricate and simply bold.

 
Beautifully painted flowers nestle against exuberant swathes of colour.  Colours that should clash dont seem to, everything has its place in the wonderful world of Emma Dunbar.

Patterned ceramics are lovingly rendered with a Fedden like simplicity, marks made by painting on and scratching out.  Images are collaged in and painted over, gold is added only to be hidden later.  Its a treasure hunt, a romp through a collectors cupboards.

Birds peck at a richly textured purple earth, sheep are scattered on patterned fields, moss green on emerald beside viridian.  Trees and twigs appear as flat designs or as scraffito marks into patches of carefully applied paint.

These are woven, multi layered and finely worked paintings that express a joie de vivre.  They are a celebration of the little things in life that are so important. They are quite simply, joyful.



Come along to the gallery and get your joy prescription.  The Emma Dunbar exhibition opens on Friday 22nd July with a private view at 6pm and continues until August 3rd.  And we will see you there, smiling!

Tozer secrets revealed!

Following Andrew Tozer’s fantastic solo show which opened our Contemporary Impressionism exhibition in collaboration with Falmouth Art Gallery, Andrew is holding a painting demo and talk at Falmouth Art Gallery on 18th August 2pm-3pm. Andrew says “come and find out some of my tips and secrets!” All are welcome and Andrew looks forward to seeing you there.

Contemporary Impressionism Continues

A SARAH WIMPERIS PREVIEW...
With a lively exhibition featuring John Raynes, Simon Stooks and Alasdair Lindsay.  Three contemporary impressionists, very different styles but all three locked into the tradition of Impressionism, they take the world around them and make it their own, offering up a personal vision of what is there.
Simon Stooks paintings, with their energetic and painterly personality being calmed down by a soft and gentle palette.  They sit on the walls like very excited children bursting to tell you something very, very important.

There are fields, baking dry underneath a Provencal sun, of twisted vines, or overblown sunflowers, with earth colours that have grabbed the sky and kissed it into the ground.  Wonderfully calm beach scenes, the hubbub of summer holiday makers lost amongst the bleached out colours of midday. John Raynes brings us back to Cornwall with his masterful handling of line and colour, he is the best artist I know for capturing the shadows of boats in water. 

His boats float, the water in the harbours is barely contained by the pictures frame.  Light floods in and out of his paintings, waves crash and spume and with each painting you can smell the iodine fresh scent of the sea.

Alasdair Lindsay bursts into the back of the gallery with his paintings shouting "I was there and this is what I saw"  The colours are vibrant and funny and glorious.  He seems to be able to look and look and pull out of a landscape all of the elements that were important.  A post here a rooftop there, a colour reflected in a stone and the hint of a well known landmark.

As well as the colourful smaller paintings there is a truly magnificent painting of Falmouth at night, it is beautiful, the colours are calm and stunning and the little flicks of light on the boats chink like the song of rigging lines against masts that is part of Falmouth's soundtrack.

 The exhibition is a good one, go and have a look for yourself, it officially opens on Saturday 9th July and continues until Wednesday 20th.  There are catalogue paintings available to purchase now and further exhibition paintings should be on line by today.

Shop on line with Beside The Wave!

We are very pleased to announce the launch of our on line shop which features a selection of our artists' work (soon to be all of it, and with 500 art works in stock, we have quite a task on our hands)!
Excitingly, you can also purchase these works, interest free on line through "Own Art."
The Own Art scheme is designed to make it easy and affordable for everyone to buy and collect contemporary art and craft.
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, photography, ceramics, glassware, and artist made jewellery and furniture.
Loans are repayable in 10 monthly instalments, completely interest free – so you’ll never be paying more than the advertised price.
Our web shop is here Beside The Wave go and have a look and see just how easy it is to click and buy.
Here is an example:

This beautiful drawing by Richard Tuff could be yours for just £13.50 a month!  That's about 45p a day, which isn't even the price of a cup of coffee.

Or this lovely painting by Sarah Wimperis would be £46.50 per month, which is about £1.50 a day and even that is less than a cup of coffee.  So you see, now you can have your cake and eat it, or rather you can have your art and love it for the rest of your life!
Go and visit the site, click here and see for yourself.

Impressionism at Beside The Wave.

Think impressionist painting and you think of Van Gogh struggling through a hot cicada rustling landscape with his easel strapped to his back, or Monet in his garden surrounded by outrageous flowers, or perhaps Bonnard documenting the intimacy of his home life.  Pull forward about 100 years and you will find the same activities happening still. Andrew Tozer presents us with a selection of paintings that are both contemporary and rooted in the glorious tradition of impressionism.  He paints Truro cathedral bathed in Cornish sunlight just as Monet painted Rouen cathedral, a corner of a daffodil field, the everyday scenes of a family life documented with the sensitive eye of the artist who opens his heart and paints.  The start of the series of contemporary impressionism exhibitions at beside the wave gallery is fittingly kicked off by one of Cornwall's best living impressionists.  This vibrant collection of wonderful paintings can be enjoyed at the gallery from June 24 until and is the first show in Beside The Wave's Contemporary Impressionism Season which is being run in partnership with Falmouth Art Gallery's British Impressionism until September.

Richard Tuff



Durgan View to Sea



The paintings of Richard Tuff are a rich tapestry of chalky shades, blues and greens punctuated here and there with a dash of burnt orange, or a splash of deep winy red.    

Flushing Boats

A patchwork quilt of seaside cottages, little boats, steps and railings, mooring lines and trees appliquéd onto a delft blue sea. 

King Charles Quay, to the Bosun's Locker

They are childlike in their view of endless summers in Cornwall but defiantly not childish in their execution. Ice cream colours nestle beside the deep greens of Cornwall's garden heritage, red sails in the sunset are echoed in roofs of higgledy piggeldy cottages. 

Looking Over St Mawes

Gouache is a very difficult medium to work in and if you study one of Richards paintings the energy and skill with which it is employed is wonderful.  The range of closely related colours and shapes mixing beautifully together to present a vision of Cornwall at its very best.

The Bridge and Ford at Helford

Favorite places are given a veil of recent history, like a souvenir box of treasured memories, the edges blurred, the senses heightened until what is left is a distillation of pure pleasure.

Pandora

Places that we have loved and sometimes lost but never for ever because they can be found and held close within these beautiful paintings.
Richard Tuff is at Beside The Wave until Wednesday 22nd June, the private view is on Friday 10th of June from 6 until 8pm.

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.