From the studio No.22

These two smallish paintings on panel were shipped out to Belgrave St. Ives in West Cornwall last week. They are a part of my Wave series, more of which will be shown during my solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery next year.

Exhibition details:

CONTEMPORARY GALLERY PAINTERS

An exhibition of work by 20 invited artists

17 Oct - 7 Nov 2022

Private View: Sat 15 Oct, 12 - 3pm

Link to the CONTEMPORARY PAINTERS PDF CATALOGUE.

You will be welcomed warmly by the gallery should you like to attend the private view next weekend or visit during the exhibition. I am hoping to be there for the P.V..

Wave 1 2022

Botanical colour on gesso panel, 56x60cm

Wave 2 2022

Botanical colour on gesso panel, 56x60cm

From the studio No.21

In my last newsletter I showed you some photographs of the Nomadic Studio on expedition up to the Scottish Highlands. Eventually, I drove South and landed for some 5-ish years in an oak woodland in West Wales. This is where I immersed myself in the woodland environment. It was as beautiful as it was tough. In some ways winter was the nicest time, more light entered as the leafy canopy from the trees fell and snow lightened the ground. In summer it was darker, damper, greener; more intense.

There also lived a timber-framer (my now husband) and a black-smith. They used the woodland to make their work and I wanted to make work ‘of the woodland’ too. Until then I has made paintings from materials foreign to the environment but depicting it. It is here that I discovered that an indelible black ink could be made from oak galls. It has been nick-named Ink of Kings, Poets and Monks, was used to write the Magna Carta and is still used today for official documents…and art. So, this was the beginning of my journey into botanical colour and my new way of working.

In the woodland, at first I continued to work in the Nomadic Studio, but once we had a baby and the space was taken up with family, I bought a box trailer to work in. I also had a new task of collecting oak galls whilst pushing a push-chair (my children now spot them for me).

I thought I’d share some of these magical photos with you.

The Nomadic Studio in the woods, summer.

Trailer studio winter.

The trailer studio at sunrise.

The woodland cathedral.

I plan to make a photo book at some point, of all of my different studios over 24 years, in different phases and projects.

From the studio No.20

Earlier in the year I listened to Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard. He’s an American rock-climber and environmentalist. He’s also a surfer and he’s the founder of the outdoor brand Patagonia. It’s an autobiography of Patagonia. Chouinard started out by wanting to make better climbing pegs, he wanted to make the best. So much so that he learnt to forge metal and sold the pegs to his climbing friends. He soon questioned the environmental ethics of climbers leaving pegs in the rock and continued to develop more sustainable equipment. It’s an incredible story with ethics and a love of the natural world at it’s core.

I told you I’d restarted surfing. I said to my Mum that I wanted to buy a Patagonia wetsuit vest with hood - yes I’m serious, it’s for winter surfing, to go under my wetsuit. I said immersion in a practice, not sunbathing or Sunday painting.

‘Ah, Yvon Chouinard’, she replied.

I thought, ‘How do you know?’.

She followed with ‘You ate your first pizza with him in Glencoe’.

Glencoe in the Western Highlands of Scotland is one of The most Beautiful places in the world. It’s also where I ate my first pizza aged 5. Actually, I ate a Lot of pizza that day, sharing some with our dog. It kindled my love of pizza, which still flames strong, however I have raised the culinary expectation having eaten one in Naples, the birthplace (around the 16th century) of pizza .

Glencoe

My life is remembered through food. I remember this time, the pizza, the deep mountain valley, the creaky floorboards of Scotland’s oldest hotel, the Kings House, it’s smart breakfast room with tartan carpet where I ate piles of triangular cut toast with marmalade (I had 8 pieces actually), and the infamous Climbers Bar where these crazy climbers told stories and drank a Lot of whisky.

Why were we (my parents and I) there? Because my Dad was just as crazy, just as pioneering, just as maverick. He was a helicopter pilot and founded PLM Helicopters (now PDG). Among many things, they were the first to film the great Scottish films in the burgeoning Scottish film industry, think Highlander, Rob Roy, Godfather etc. He was the most skilled pilot they had and if a challenging job arose it was he who was asked for. Yvon Chouinard would only have been 41 then, my Dad 35. Now in my 40’s it is interesting to reflect on their age.

Here in Glencoe they were making a mountain rescue film and had the best climbers from around the world and Scotland. It was a small world they inhabited so I guess they all knew each other. Hamish MacInnes, Scottish mountaineer, explorer, mountain search and rescuer, author, whisky drinker and story teller was there too. He designed the eponymous lightweight, foldable alloy stretcher called the MacInnes stretcher, widely used in mountain and helicopter rescue, he invented the first all-metal ice-axe and he was named the father of modern mountain rescue.

So I got to hang out with these greats, some many times And I got to eat marmalade toast and pizza out on the misty Scottish hillsides.

‘They were good times’, my Mum said.

The Nomadic studio at the back of the King’s House Hotel, with Ben Etive in the background., Glencoe, Highland, Scotland.

Glencoe is where I returned to first, after I converted an old removals lorry into my Nomadic Studio for a trip to Scotland. On this adventure, I took with me my studio companions and best friends, a cat and dog.

Glenfinnan

Just to show that I really did have a travelling cat. Here we are stopped in Devon (for a year), on our way from West Cornwall to Glencoe and the Western Isles. The studio space was 2m cubed.

I feel very lucky to have grown up in this environment. The mountains and sea and an outdoor life has shaped who I am. These Highlands are my anchor.

And by-the-way (I know she’s reading this). My mum wasn’t just a by-stander, a supporter, a pizza eater. Before she moved to Scotland she was a fashion designer and up North, morphed her skills into a little company named Heli-Mac, making bespoke covers for helicopters left overnight on a snowy hillside, rather than in a hanger, so they could be ready to work the next day. She also made their onboard survival tents. She would have been 34.

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P.S.

I’m going to replace my ancient falling-to-bits winter neoprene wetsuit with one of SRFace’s (they’re cheaper than Patagonia) winter beasts, complete with gloves and boots - like Patagonia, they are committed to reducing their environmental impact, use eco-friendly biomaterial producers Yulex, an alternative to fossil fuel bases neoprene, creating the first plant-based wetsuit material. Once you start researching, neoprene from worn-out wetsuits creates yet another plastic pollutant which suffocates our seas.

The issue of ocean plastic lies very close to my heart and pushes me to be more sustainable every day. Parley t.v. and Parley AIR are one of the important charities helping to combat this. The link below takes you there. If you scroll down you will hear about Albatross the film. It’s a most stunning piece of cinematography and music with a beautiful (and tragic) story about the life-cycle of the albatross in the South Pacific. I recommend that you don’t watch the trailer, it covers the deeper message but not the beauty. I urge you to watch the film.

Parley AIR

Parley for the oceans

Parley also make sunglasses and sell yarn for manufacture from collected sea plastic.

‘The oceans are the planet’s largest climate regulator. They cover 71 percent of the Earth’s surface. Life in the sea provides more than half the oxygen we breathe, as well as food and livelihoods for billions.’, Parley.com

So, that’s 1 in every 2 breaths that we take are provided by a healthy marine eco-system. Apparently there’s 10 years until this collapses and plastic pollution is deep in perpetration. Unless we do something.

My art practice is at it’s most sustainable yet and people like Yvon Chouinard lead the way on a global scale. We can all make a difference, we have so much power through deciding how and where we spend our money. Since writing this newsletter Chouinard has announced that he is giving away the company and has developed a trust and non-profit designed to donate all of the company’s profits into saving the planet. He states their new mission that ‘Earth Is Now Our Only Shareholder’.

Parley - the-air-we-breathe - film

From the studio No.19

Hello,

Here in Wales, schools are back, it is still warm but the torrential monsoon like downpours herald autumn. The sea is also a balmy 19 degrees C.

I’ve taken up surfing. A second shot at it. I’ve bought an easier board to ride than I had before, figuring that the more I get up, the better I get and the more fun it is.

I’ve also started a vision board. I’ve never made one of these before. It has lots of sumptuous images on it but the main one I connected to and resonated with, the one my heart was with, has three women long-boarding next to each other, full of joy and sisterhood. I wanted to find a women’s surf group or retreat and to surf with women…a week later on Instagram, a local women’s weekly surf group popped up in my feed. My vision board has no digital connection. Wow! I’ve been once and CAN’T WAIT TO GO AGAIN.

Why am I telling you this? Because art is life and I fully immerse my art practice into my life and my life into my art practice. Not a lot doesn’t cross over. Ever. Surfing is an immersion in water and air. Air and Ocean.

I’m not painting landscapes in the traditional representational manner or in the oil painting style that I used to. I’m making work ‘of the landscape’, using botanical pigments and my immersion in the place and space. My living in it as it lives in me; how it feels to hear and sense the wind on your skin, the ocean on your forehead, down your body. Tthe power of the water and the quietening of the snow. To live viscerally. To live to create.

So as the BEEP Painting Prize and Biennial comes to an end, I collect Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time and ship it to Bristol next week for it’s second outing. I’m excited to have not just one but two large 4 x 4’ paintings accepted into the RWA 169th Annual Open Exhibition. On two previous occasions I’ve had a small monotype and a large-ish lithograph accepted. This is a milestone. Two at once and they’re taking up some space!

Royal West Of England Academy 169th Annual Open Exhibition 8 Oct 2022 - 8 Jan 2023

It’s also exciting because this is my new work which has been accepted into BEEP and the RWA. It takes some courage to change your work, to leave behind what has worked before but this evolution has been coming for some time and is just as authentic as before. I started making oak gall ink in 2011 when I lived off-grid in my Nomadic Studio in an oak woodland in West Wales. In 2020, during the first pandemic lockdown, I started to broaden my palette, creating colour from plants grown and foraged around our land.

I’m excited about making this work. My next large solo exhibition at Elysium gallery in Swansea in 2023, supported by an Arts Council Wales Create grant will be all about this work.

Below are the two paintings which will be shown at the RWA in Bristol, UK.

Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time 2022

Botanical colour on gesso on birch ply panel, 122x122cm

Prosodic Chapters Of Immanent Silence 2022

Botanical colour on gesso on birch ply panel, 122x122cm

FROM THE STUDIO NO.18

From 24th July 2022 newsletter.

I seem to have skipped a month…or two…hmmm so what’s been happening?

Well, I’ve been to the Do Lectures and have taken a while to land. If you don’t know about it check out their website, it’s a festival of ideas to put it lightly. All of the talks are online.

It’s also been fantastic weather here, it’s the school holidays, so beach camps and lighting the dye-bath fire. I’ve had a little help from some cinnabar moths to harvest dye plants and hang up the dyed fabric.

I realised today that I have a few exhibition openings to tell you about, it’s a weekend of events actually. You are most welcome to attend any of the events and please do come and say hi if you do.

I entered the Beep Painting Prize, an open submission juried exhibition. Launched in 2012, BEEP (biennial exhibition of painting) is a contemporary international painting prize based in Swansea, Wales. So, nice and local. I’m really excited to get into this.

Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time was selected for the exhibition, which opens on Friday 29th July at 7pm. The Elysium Gallery bar will merge into the after party as usual.

Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time 2022

Botanical colour on gesso on birch ply panel, 122x122cm

The Beep Painting Prize is the first exhibition opening of the Beep Painting Biennial where there will be many exhibitions Swansea wide. Saturday 30th July 7pm opens the touring exhibition Walking In Two Worlds, in which I have several pieces. This exhibition takes place at the large Volcano Theatre Gallery. (This posters date starts in June, I can only assume that it was delayed for some reason).

The third exhibition opening this weekend is the Salon De Refuse at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. It coincides with the National Eisteddfod which is a celebration of the culture and language in Wales and alternates between North and South Wales every year. I entered a large painting and photograph diptych into the National Eisteddfod and was ‘refused’ and have been accepted into the Salon De Refuses.

In case you don’t know, the Salon De Refuses is generally known as an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon. Famously Manet, Pissaro, Courbet, Whistler and many impressionists were rejected in the Salon of 1863, but the critical attention ultimately legitimized the emerging avant-garde in painting.

This opens at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Sunday evening, July 31st at 5pm in Oriel 2.

I’ll be at Beep and Walking In Two Worlds. Hope to see you there!

STUDIO JOURNAL 10

From 15th May 2022 newsletter

For the last couple of weeks I have been working in the studio on compositions on paper as well as making gesso for some small panels plus sourcing a supplier for some large 150cm and 180cm panels. I’m excited about this supplier, they make bespoke poplar plywood panels. Their poplar plywood is sustainably sourced, PEFC and FSC certified and is approximately 40% lighter than birch plywood. In my push to make my creative practice more sustainable I’m looking for panels which don’t use tropical hardwood ply and as I said before, birch ply stocks come from Russia. They’re also made in the U.K..

STUDIO JOURNAL 9

From 1st May 2022 newsletter.

After much clearing space and decision making, the studio partition wall is down. The space has completely changed dynamics and I no longer ‘walk like an Egyptian’ to get in. Incase you don’t get it, I just quoted a song title - I’m now prompted me to look up the video on Youtube AND share it with you! The Bangles - Walk Like An Egyptian

Below are some photos showing progression of the studio interior wall dismantle.

Plaster board off

Posts and strengthening beam in, white paint next.

With this renewerd space I can start creating work for my solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery, a public gallery space in an old nightclub in Swansea, Wales, so lots of different and interesting spaces to fill. I’ve all sorts of ideas, including a 3-D painting installation, so now in the studio I can stretch out a little more. It’s very exciting.

However, I am in desperate need for a more permanent studio and painting store. Currently my work is stored in a static caravan, it isn’t ideal but it is somewhere seperate to the work space. I regularly empty two dehumidifiers and just recently I encountered a second leak. I’d say that storage is always an issue for artists, the work often takes up half of a studio space. So with this new leak I have lost a further 8 works on paper plus their frames. The previous flood brought damage to many large canvases.

Sharing a less glamorous side to being an artist, here is one of the damaged works, from my Ash Series.

Sooo, away from the Gloom…

I’ve been reading about quantum science and the quantum field for sometime through the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, he also covers epigenetcs, neuro-science and meditation. It’s so interesting. When I start working on a series I don’t look at anyone else’s work but I read, including artists writings. I’m re-reading books In Praise Of Painting by Ian MacKeever RA, Resistance & Persistence Selected Writings by Sean Scully. I’m thinking I’ll look out my book of Bridget Riley’s writings, she writes with such insight on her own work and of other artists’. The new publication by Pace Gallery, Agnes Martin - The Distillation Of Colour, has arrived today. I am so looking forward to reading it. I’ve also been watching videos on Youtube of Brice Marden talking about his work. There’s such an incredible archive online. 

This week I’ve been making composition drawings and working out ideas for paintings for my solo exhibition in 2023. They're part of an Energy Field and Mapping series.

Mapping 1, botanical ink on etching paper, 23x24.5cm

Mapping 3, botanical ink on etching paper, 23x24.5cm

STUDIO JOURNAL 8

From 3rd April 2022 newsletter - Drawn to nature

Here on Friday morning in South-West Wales, we woke up with melted, hardened, snowy hail. Crunchy under foot, the school run brought back memories of Scottish winters driving through creaky snow laden roads.

I grew up in the Scottish Highlands, in an area of rich soils and deciduous forests, between the foothills of the Cairngorm mountains and the sea. For some years I spent every weekend during winter with the Cairngorm ski club; season pass strapped to my arm, balaklava and hat pulled high to protect my face from the often fierce and bitter weather. In fact, lunchtimes were regularly spent thawing out our gloves and balaclavas under hand driers whilst eating squished semi-frozen egg sandwiches.

However, when the weather was clear and dry, it felt like the most beautiful place in the world. More corries than peaks, deep and snow covered, it was a place where you looked down rather than across or up.

Infact, the Scots don’t call their hills mountains, they’re hills. I think there’s a modesty to it, they aren’t towering and grand like the Alps. Yet within this modesty belies an awe. They are awesome in the true sense of the word and having spent some time away now from both Cairngorm and Nevis Range, on occasion to return I have been humbly brought to a standstill.

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In 2007, whilst travelling from West Cornwall to an artist residency in the Northern Isles (Shetland), I stopped near Inverness with some great friends. One of them, Mandy, lent me her book Findings by Kathleen Jamie. Handing it to me she told me I should read it. It took me half of the book before it fully got into me. And it got me.

While I was doing my fine art Masters I was looking for books to see how writers tackled the subject of nature and landscape. I read Thoreau, Emerson plus other great writings but they were not what I was looking for. I wanted something to really resonate with my approach. Kathleen Jamie’s Findings led me on to discover The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. The difference in these writers to the previous readings was what I was looking for. Less conquestorial, more about place and the poetics of it.

Cairngorm from the A9

The Living Mountain is a personal account of being in and knowing the Cairngorms. In the studio this week, listening to it this time around, it is sympathetically read with a voice which lulls one into the miracle and beauty of nature.

I quote The Living Mountain, Chapter 11 : The Senses

‘For the ear the most vital thing that can be listened to here is silence. To bend the ear to silence is to discover how seldom it is there. Always something moves. When the air is quite still, there is always running water, and up here that is a sound that one can hardly lose, though on many stony parts of the plateau one is above the water courses. But now and then comes an hour when the silence is all but absolute and listening to it one slips out of time.

Such a silence is not a mere negation of sound. It is like a new element and if water is still sounding with a low far off murmur, it is no more than last edge of an element we are leaving, as the last edge of land hangs on the mariners horizon. Such moments come in mist, or snow, or a summer night when it is too cool for the clouds of insects to be abroad, or a September dawn. In September dawns I hardly breathe. I am an image in a ball of glass. The world is suspended there and I in it. ‘

Passing the Eastern edge of the Cairngorms on the A9.

I have another friend, who now lives at the foot of Ben Nevis. She is a geologist and mountain guide to put it lightly. Her current job involves a walking commute to a very specific area of Nevis Range to monitor moss and grass. Her walk to work is 6 hours one way. She used to live in the Cairngorms and told me once that she doesn't get lost there, doesn't actually need a map and compass (although she’s got a heid enough to take one). She said, even in fog she knows every rock and can find her way.

Now this, is knowing a place.

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It is difficult to better the mountain and sea air and they are places that I have always been drawn towards.

All of these photos have been included because I have always really appreciated how both fog and snow rub out features (and sounds) in the landscape, altering distance and scale. Everything becoming visually simplified.

One of my favourite south-west Wales beaches local to us.

And yes, it is a secret!

Thank you for reading this. If you would like to follow my newsletter you can sign up here SUBSCRIBE.

STUDIO JOURNAL 8

From newsletter 27th March.

Vignette (study), 34.5 x 61cm. Botanical inks on gesso panel 2022

I’ve got some grreat news.

After a lengthy and meticulous application for an Arts Council Wales grant, I have now received an email saying that my application has been successful. Hurrah!!

The grant is to create a solo exhibition to be shown at Elysium Gallery in Swansea in 2023. It is a large space and I have lots of ideas. I plan to have two painting installations, one with 3-Dimensional work as well as individual paintings and diptychs. The grant will enable me to commission and collaborate with other creatives as well. For example, I’ll be able to get some professional photography of my work a video documenting my process and a sound commission for an installation. It is very exciting and lots of work to do.

More information about the project will be unveiled over time. The exact date is yet to be confirmed with the gallery, I really hope you will be able to come for the opening night or during opening hours of exhibition. It will of course also be documented online, for those who can’t make it.

Oak gall ink and gesso on paper.

I’ve made a start by making some small studies on gessoed paper, board and panel and although when I start working on a series I don’t look at anyone else’s work, I’m currently re-reading books ‘In Praise Of Painting’ by Ian MacKeever RA, ‘Agnes Martin’ by Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell, ‘Resistance & Persistence Selected Writings by Sean Scully. I’m thinking I’ll look out my book of Bridget Riley’s writings, she writes with such insight on her own work and of other artists’.

I’ve also been watching videos on Youtube of Brice Marden talking about his work. There’s such an incredible archive online.

Studio table

STUDIO JOURNAL 7

From 13th March 2022 newletter.

I've entered the Void.

I'm piecing scraps of paper, notes, scribbles, rushed doodles, gathered in pockets and bag, stacked in a corner of the studio table. Ideas yet to realise, to consider, to get me back into where I was, what I've been thinking but unable to attend to.

There's been a gap in my studio making….A big gap.

Peaks and troughs, ebbs and flows of one kind or another are normal within a creative practice, I've learnt to navigate these according to their nature. However, I haven't made any paintings since last July (Somewhere to live with my family became THE priority, to get into the 6 year long renovation before winter really hits.).

This feels somewhat like an confession. And it is a painting space to re-enter…hence the Void. Gulp.

I’ve been through the plans chests, deep into the drawing archive. The drawings below are a selection ranging from as far back as 2002 until 2021.

And I’ve started putting layers of gesso ground onto paper and birch ply panel, to ready for working on.

But while renovating and grasping at the void while trusting that all will keep flowing, I’ve been listening to lots of books. I Really recommend this one:

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art, by Mary Gabriel.

It’s been a fantastic companion in the studio while I organise the space; fun and insightful.

It really is a remarkable account of life for those who became the New York School in 40’s and 50’s in the U.S., taking over from Paris as the epicentre of modern art. It’s told utterly in the context of politics, depression, war, American art tradition, the oscillating positions of women in society and the propaganda around this. It provides a much needed documentation and redressing of some of the major female Abstract Expressionists putting them in their rightful position, at the heart of the movement.

These women really led the way for where we are now and what an inspiration they are.

STUDIO JOURNAL 6

From 19th February2022 newletter - I’m behind with posting!

I’m on a complete shift around and sort out in my studio - changing the space and trying my best to practice the discipline of not getting distracted. As I move sketchbooks and notebooks, getting distracted is an easy place to find myself. It’s interesting but the task at hand just takes longer and causes tiredness of brain.

My studio already has two high stacked piles of drawings look back on, to refocus, to remember, to reignite, to move on from. It is also a framing studio at the moment, in preparation for Welsh Art Week next month.

However…I allowed myself a quick glimpse, one page, a random page, from a notebook circa 2002 - very hastily written by the looks of it.

‘Painting is but another word for feeling’ , John Constable (1776-1837)

‘When pictures start to tell stories, boredom enters in’, Francis Bacon (1909-1992)

I’ve never been one for narrative paintings yet behind each painting is a story.

STUDIO JOURNAL 5

From 6th February 2022 newsletter.

I came across this quote/idea the other day on the word impossible, I thought I’d share it with you.

It changes it completely.

“Impossible” has a meaning that imposes huge limitations. But if we split it into two words, it changes that limitation into opportunity. One that we have power over because … I’m Possible.

Impossible Is Nothing.

Mich Bondesio

Studio journal 4

I've got a little box of watercolour tubes that I've had sitting around for a few years. My father-in-law gave them to me, his father was a painter. I, or perhaps they, have been waiting for the right time.

I've found it difficult to get motivation moving these last two weeks. It is far from a usual problem. Perhaps there's the overwhelm of moving house and trying to clear a pathway into my studio where things have been strewn amidst the chaos. Plus the bliss of finally being in a house and wanting to slack out on the sofa.

I did something I've often done when I don't know how to get started. I went to the sea. I packed my special off-piste snowboarding rucksack - used for day long adventures. It helps me to create intention of letting go and exploring what comes up. Off to find a wild, windswept, isolated beach I did.

I packed a little portable set of watercolours. Perhaps the time is right now to explore watercolour but…note to self to not drift too far into the allure of what they can do - the pooling, the reticulation - not make 'watercolour paintings' per se but to use them in my own way. For this, they seem a good quick sketching tool.

The morning started with a thick freezing fog at home, the journey to the sea opened out and the long steep walk down brought a pool of sunshine to where I positioned my belongings on a flat boulder.

The day was beautiful.

The sea was calm, small waves dolloped the shoreline dragging pebbles away with them. Such a beautiful sounds that makes you sit very still and Listen. Out at sea cloud was low and colours were limited to gorgeous greys and aqua of the small cresting waves.

By the end of the day I was watching the freezing fog roll in and envelop the beach.

Play the above video to watch waves dolloping onto the shore in fog.

Thank you for reading this. If you would like to follow this studio journal and sign-up to my newsletter for exhibition updates, inspiration and available work you can sign up at sarahpoland.co.uk/subscribe I send it out some Sunday’s at 11am.

And do please reach out through the contact form if you have any questions.

Studio journal 3

Souvenance

I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human functions’ ______________________________________ Diane Di Prima, _____________Beat Poet (August 6, 1934 – October 25, 2020)

And so too the painter.

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Diane Di Prima was a poet and writer of the American Beat Generation.

Back in 2002 I went to Western Canada to meet a great friend of mine, to snowboard as she finished her season and to travel together up the West coast. We stopped a night or two in Tofino, B.C. I wasn’t sure at the time why I didn’t join her on a whale watching boat trip, but I drifted into a lovely bookshop, sat on the floor to browse a shelf and came across this wonderful book. Actually, it pretty much jumped out at me.

Some years prior, on a U.S. trip, someone I met recommended Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Another great book for that time in my life and it turned out, took the same route that I did. That was my introduction to the Beat Generation and so finding this book focusing on the Women was very exciting.

They are the reason I drink coffee - Coffee And Writing Go Together.

For me, a coffee taps into this culture and also our European cafe culture, particularly of the 50’s and 60’s. I Love the B&W photographs from these era’s, the starkness, the contrasts.

One of my favourite poems ever is Rant by Diane Di Prima - it is in this book. I also discovered Jay DeFeo and her incredible work The Rose, a 2,300 lb. painting which she spent eight years making.

The Beats in turn lead me to Patti Smith, punk poet, writer, rock musician’s thoughts and writing.

So this was the reason I missed the whale watching!

Jay DeFeo working on The Rose, 1958–66,
in her Fillmore Street studio, NYC 1960. Photo: Burt Glinn.

I’ve just gotta squeeze in a favourite photo…one of British painter Sandra Blow who lived in St. Ives for many years. I love Roger Mayne’s images of the artists there. The other Michael Gaca, director of Belgrave St. Ives took of me at Carn Galva after a bush fire in 2006. It was in my 2006 exhibition at the gallery Tuath (click for catalogue).

Sandra Blow (1925-2006) in her studio 1959 by Roger Mayne (1929-2014)

Sarah Poland 2006 by Michael Gaca

Studio journal 2

Every now and then I think about my journey, how I got to here, now, where I started, what the story is.

We all have a story, one unique to us.

I always have a story behind a particular piece of work or a series.

My first exposure to abstract modern art wasn’t until I was 17. Growing up in the Highlands of Scotland there wasn’t much. I went alone to the Inverness Museum once, determined to see some art – I saw a stuffed polecat, stags head and a dusty ptarmigan among other objects. It wasn’t what I was looking for, besides, I’d seen some in the wild.

Joan Eardley - Catterline in Winter (1963)

Mum had a poster of Joan Eardley’s Catterline In WInter 1963 on the wall. I would often stare at it, be in it, feel it.

It definitely helped kindle my love of bleak Northern landscapes, coast and falling snow, besides growing up in the foothills of the Cairngorm Mountains.

It's Funny How Oak Trees Look Pink In Snow No.2 (2018)

My school history of art lessons used B&W photocopies of... the Impressionists. Paintings which I subsequently learnt are huge, are all about colour, colour harmonies, brush marks, feeling, joy. Obviously none of these qualities came across in the photocopies.

My first Real exposure to modern art was at the Tate Gallery, now Tate Britain. Again, thanks to my mum, she took me down to London on an art trip just before my school exams. And thank goodness she did, for it sparked a drive that got me into one of our countries best art schools, Edinburgh College of Art.

I remember going around the National Gallery and the Tate. I remember at the end of our day at Tate peeking through a tiny window in a door, not unlike a medieval arrow slit. Straining to see as much as possible and begging my mum to pay for me to go in - the rest of the vast gallery was free to enter but this was a temporary touring exhibition and was typically expensive.

She did. Bless her.

What I saw in 1993 was an exhibition by American painter Robert Ryman. Known as the ‘painter of white paintings’, he is one of the foremost abstract artists of his generation. The influence that this one exhibition had was so profound it still resonates deeply today.

And he predominantly used white paint and little else!

Robert Ryman - Untitled (1962)

Robert Ryman - Untitled (1965)

Robert Ryman - Classico 5 (1968)

Studio Journal 1

I’ve been making oak gall ink since I discovered it’s possibility in 2010 and last year I started to broaden my palette. These particular works include eucalyptus leaf, avocado skin, ivy berry and oak gall ink. I have chosen these because they rank as the most permanent of natural colours and also because they feature either in my garden, my kitchen or are native wild plants (sustainably picked of course).

Avocado skin ink on Hannemule paper.

Ivy berry ink on Hannemule paper

These works are part of a series of small work on etching paper titled Boundaries. Using ecological botanical inks which I make by hand, I then make the image using monotype and drawing techniques.

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I am selling this work from my website as part of the Artist Support Pledge initiative. I'm aiming to post 5 small works every week.

Artist Support Pledge was started by artist Matthew Burrows @matthewburrowsstudio to help support artists through the COVID-19 pandemic.

The concept is simple, post images of your work to sell for no more than £200 each. Anyone can buy the work. Every time the artist generates £1000 of sales, they pledge to buy another artist’s work for £200 using the #artistsupportpledge hashtag.

Head to my purchase page for details on each piece