Paintings of Cornwall

I'm just finishing preparations for a show next month of paintings and drawings of Cornwall.

It's a very exciting show with two other artists, Euan McGregor and Peter Wileman, at the Lime Tree Gallery in Bristol, called The Cornish Landscape.

I travelled round Cornwall last summer, and the result is a series of oil paintings, drawings and postcard sketches of the county.

I love Cornwall, and I wanted to get a sense of a place that's very much on the edge of things, surrounded by the sea. It's also a landscape that has been shaped by the people that have lived there before, whether it is ancient Celtic monuments, the ruins of the tin-mines, or a place where artists such as Peter Lanyon or Barbara Hepworth have been and interpreted in their work.

Portheras Cove, (Oil on linen, 32 x 32)

 

This is a painting called Portheras Cove.  You have to walk a long way on a path that goes up and down the cliff to get there, so it's not easy.  It's a beautiful beach (although there are dire warnings not to walk in bare feet because there is metal from shipwrecks under the sand!).  

 

 

I wanted to do a series of paintings of places that are secret and discovered, coves that are like the places that you remember from childhood - somewhere special and exciting with just the sand and the sea, full of the possibilities of adventure.

 

The show opens with a preview on Saturday 13th April.