From blogging to printmaking ~ a journey of discovery

"Introduction to Printmaking" course at Newlyn School of Art

Contemplating the courses on offer at Newlyn School of Art, I wondered if my habit of blogging was just a way of taking refuge in the written word. Was it a bit unfair to write about artists without ever experiencing, albeit briefly, a sense of the angst and excitement involved in the creation of an artwork? While titles such as ‘Cornish Landscape’ or ‘Watercolour’ sounded tempting, I soon had second thoughts. As one who is afflicted by instant paralysis at the prospect of making a mark on paper with a pencil or brush, I feared that either of these courses might reduce me to a nervous wreck. Eventually I settled on the two-day Introduction to Printmaking – a process whose mystique had always intrigued me.

Rosemary Ziar ~ daughter of St Ives

In December 2010 a canvas by the late Rosemary Ziar was presented to St Ives Library, on loan from her family. Entitled ‘Portreath 1974’, it hangs alongside works by her contemporaries Ben Nicholson, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Bryan Pearce. That this painting has found a new home in St Ives is entirely appropriate. Elizabeth Rosemary Rowe, whose birth in the nearby Sheaf of Wheat pub in 1919 entitled her to describe herself as a ‘hake’*, came from a family with a long tradition in tin mining and farming. Her maternal grandfather was Madron Trembath, who had been the mine captain at Geevor. After his premature death her grandmother married Thomas Job, the licensee of the pub. Her aunt, Mabel Trembath, was a colourful figure who helped out behind the bar. Mabel lived to a great age and recalled serving D H Lawrence and his wife on their regular visits to St Ives from Zennor during the First World War. Lawrence was a conscientious objector and Frieda was German, so the couple were viewed with a great deal of suspicion by the locals.

Grace Gardner ~ a life in abstraction

 ‘I paint because there is nothing in life I would rather do.’

In her younger days, Grace Gardner was described as ‘delicate’. So I expected to be greeted by a figure of frailty when I first met the artist at her home near Falmouth. As a young woman in Chicago she had been admitted to a tuberculosis sanatorium just as the bombing of Pearl Harbour took place, plunging her country into the Second World War. The outcome of long months of treatment in those days was far from certain. Grace and her fellow patients, conscious of their vulnerability, were plagued by fear about their possible fate at the hands of the Germans or Japanese, should the United States be invaded. Though she was discharged after nine months, it would be a further five years before her health was fully restored.

A Forgotten Prodigy ~ Joan Manning Sanders 1913-2002

A review of Penlee House Gallery’s Autumn 2011 exhibition

Penlee’s latest show turns the spotlight onto Joan Manning Sanders, a painter whose reputation has languished for some eighty years. Attaining her first commission at the age of eleven, this rising star of the 1920s was exhibiting at London’s Royal Academy by the time she was sixteen. Over a period of ten years she established a career as a renowned portrait painter, then disappeared off the critics’ radar.

Louise Connell at Falmouth Art Gallery

My carefully prepared list of questions receded into insignificance when I arrived at Falmouth Art Gallery to meet its recently appointed director. Louise Connell clearly feels very much at home in her new environment. Bursting with enthusiasm, she whisked me down into the basement store, revealing an Aladdin’s cave of artworks to which she responded with a mixture of affection, delight and awe.

Edith Collier ~ New Zealand’s forgotten artist

When Edith Collier died in 1964, several of the younger generation in her family had no idea that she had been an artist. She passed away in the family home she shared with her sisters in Wanganui, on the west coast of New Zealand’s North island, the town where she was born some eighty years earlier.

Open Studios Cornwall 2011

Happily coinciding with the start of summer, Open Studios has become a well-established fixture in Cornwall’s cultural calendar. In its seventh year under the auspices of Creative Skills, and having recently attracted the sponsorship of Truro Arts, its future looks assured. With over 200 participants this year (two-thirds of them women) it was difficult to choose which studios to visit, so I decided to limit myself to mid-Cornwall.