In my practice I seek to explore what it is that gives a place its unique quality. We all seem to know when we are in a place, or when we leave a place but what is it that defines the boundaries? What is it that creates the feel of a place both in terms of our emotional reaction and the physical elements that exist within it, and how do these depend upon each other? How does a place differ from a location in space?
These concepts of Space and Place have long been the subject of enquiry of both philosophers and artists. The transition between the here and the there may mark the boundary between the known and the unknown, between the safe and the insecure and between the present and the future. Landscape art has traditionally sought to portray this by representing the view of the space surrounding a place, but maybe the principal boundary is that between the self and the outer, the point where person meets place and how that interaction is recorded by our senses, but also how that interaction changes both person and place. This change works on an individual level but also on a collective level. We live in a world that is constantly changing and that change is more and more being driven by the actions of the human race, by our personal actions and our collective actions.
I have been using an ontological approach to my work to investigate the physical elements that go to make up the fabric of a place, exploring the found landscapes that contain us or may be contained by us in the palm of a hand. Walking the landscape, allowing images and patterns to make themselves known to me has become a central part of my practice. There is a point of intersection between the geological timescale of the creation and movement of a single pebble and the brief moment of my being at the same point, and in this instant a work of art may be conceived. The creation of one object from another through the interpretation of marks using the medium of paint is the process by which part of my self becomes combined with part of the Place. That point of intersection also creates a location in Space defining the visible landscape that surrounds it. As Yi-Fu Tuan puts it:
“… if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for location to be transformed into place” (Tuan, 2011, p. 6)
Tuan, Y.-F., 2011. Space and place: the perspective of experience, 7. print. ed. Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minn.
After a lifetime working in science and technology, including working with some of the most respected scientists on the planet, I have now taken the time to pursue my interest in the arts and in painting in particular.
My work centres around a fascination with what makes a place seem unique, what defines it and how art can be used to capture this essence of place and how what we think of as a place relates to the space around it. Where are the boundaries? How does the surrounding landscape help to define the feelings that one has about a particular location? How closely can we ‘zoom in’ before the notion of place becomes meaningless, and are there any physical attributes that exist outside the mental picture that we all create when we think of a place?
This notion of place not only encompasses the spatial elements that define location but must also include a recognition of the dimension of time. The very material that builds a place is constantly changing at rates that vary between the moment of observation and the geological time of the earth itself. The intersection point of these time frames becomes a memory that builds with others to create what we think of as a place.
My paintings are therefore a representation of those elements that I feel best represent the feelings and memories that go to create my own experience of being in a place.
Upcoming exhibition:
17 – 23/5/2023 – SHINGLE joint exhibition of painting and photography with Linda Mayoux
Ballroom Arts, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, UK
Previous exhibitions:
2012 – 2017: Annual Art Exhibitions, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge
2010: Exhibition in support of Wintercomfort for the Homeless, Six Bells, Cambridge
Projects:
2008 – 2020: Founded and ran Cambridge Life Artists Group (CLAG) to provide monthly life drawing sessions for local artists in and around Cambridge.
Education:
2011 – present BA (Hons) Painting, The Open College of the Arts
2008 – 2011 BA (Hons) Humanities and Art History, The Open University
1976 – 1979 BSc. (Hons) Electronic Engineering, The City University, London
Short courses:
2022 Joan Eardley: Land Sea and People, St Ives School of Painting.
2021 Abstracting Zennor in Autumn, St Ives School of Painting.
2021 The Thick and the Thin of it: Painting the Ocean, St Ives School of Painting.
2021 Simply Oils, Norfolk Painting School
2020 Sketch into Painting, St Ives School of Painting. (online)
2019 Artist’s Retreat Week, St Ives School of Painting.
2019 Contemporary Landscape, St Ives School of Painting.
2019 Abstracting the Figure in Paint, St Ives School of Painting.
After a career spent working in scientific and medical research an honours degree (first class) in humanities and art history with the Open University gave me an understanding of where my own thoughts, feelings and ideas fit in the landscape of the art world.
Having been trained in engineering drawing back in the days before computer aided design I understood the process of how three-dimensional objects can be represented on a two-dimensional picture plane and my path into art was initially through drawing. The representation of the human figure with its combination of structural requirements and living, breathing personality provided an ideal source of subject matter. Before long I had set up and was running monthly all-day life drawing sessions that attracted artists from not only the local Cambridge area but also further afield.
Attending several short courses at the St Ives School of Painting and the Norfolk Painting School has taught me the pleasures and pitfalls of painting and this is now my main medium of expression.
Aims:
Through my painting I seek to capture the essence of a place, what makes it the way it is and what makes it different to other places. Using an ontological approach I seek out the colours and textures of the substances that make up the thing that we know of as a place, whether it is the natural elements or the built environment, or indeed how those two aspects come together and interact.
I see my art as the art of place in relation to space and whereas traditional landscapes portray the view from a point looking at somewhere out there, I try to look at the place where I am. The focus thus moves from the horizon to the centre and in doing so reveals landscapes that exist on a different scale but are landscapes none the less.
My process starts with walking, not to anywhere or with a purpose in mind but just absorbing, allowing the environment to interact with me. Zen monks seek the state of no-mind and this part of the process feels like a meditation. At some point something will catch my eye, sometimes a stone or a shell or maybe a piece of rusty metal, but it will be an interaction and it is this moment at this place that I will then use to produce an artwork.
At the last tutorial we discussed how I might improve my work by allowing the paint to create the image rather than trying to force it. I had been working on glazing over a grisaille to try and recreate the patterns found within the thin layers of an oyster shell.
I decided to try and carry on developing this painting by putting more varied layers of glaze on to try and give it more depth.
Pathway acrylic on canvas (60 x 60 cm)
I think that this has improved the painting and has certainly knocked back the harshness of the white.
I then started a new painting again based on an oyster shell.
Source image:
This has a dynamic quality that evokes a feeling of a storm at sea.
Rather than creating a grisaille for this painting I used an acrylic extender medium with Golden Open acrylics to allow me to work wet-in-wet and blend and mix with the brush on the canvas. Layers of glaze were then applied over parts of the image to build up a sense of depth.
Shell Storm acrylic on canvas (60 x 60 cm)
Texture
Since coming back from Cornwall I had been thinking about how Stephanie Sandercock uses texture to develop her stone-based paintings and so I decided to take a small deviation over the Christmas period to experiment with her techniques.
She now uses a fine plaster used to create plaster mouldings and decorations on ceilings that she orders specially from a company in Scotland, but looking at her videos she started off by using tiling adhesive and so that is what I used as it is cheap and available from Homebase.
I prepared a 60 x 60 cm canvas with several coats of gesso to give a solid base before building up layers of the adhesive.
As a source image I used a photograph of the rocks on Porthmeor beach in St Ives:
Porthmeor Rocks acrylic and tile paste on canvas (60 x 60 cm)
The tile adhesive is quite difficult to manipulate and it’s not easy to get a sense of the texture from the photograph, but as an experiment it didn’t go too badly. However, I don’t really have enough time to get distracted from creating content for the exhibition, so I may come back to playing around with these ideas sometime in the future but not now.
Shingle
Discussions with Linda about our joint exhibition led me to consider the space on one of the walls and what I might use it for. Looking at the work of Helen Thomas and in particular her paintings of how plants and weeds can grow within the built environment got me thinking about the plants that grow on the shingle beach. These hardy plants manage to survive in very hostile conditions battered by the wind and sea and with no soil and are a vital part of the shingle coast in binding things together and preventing erosion.
I ordered a bulk supply of 30 x 30 cm canvases with the idea that I can create a matrix of 9 of these small paintings to fit the space and it would also provide a purchase opportunity for those whose pockets are not so deep.
Of course one problem with the plan is that I had to work out how to paint a shingle beach and not just single stones. In fact I have now developed a technique which I feel gives a reasonable result without driving me completely mad.
Winter Sun acrylic on canvas (30 x 30 cm)Frosty Morning acrylic on canvas (30 x 30 cm)Convolvulus acrylic on canvas (30 x 30 cm)Sea Kale acrylic on canvas (30 x 30 cm)Yellow Horned Poppy acrylic on canvas (30 x 30 cm)
These realist paintings are something of a departure from my other works, however in terms of the exhibition plans I feel that they will serve as a link between my paintings and Linda’s photography and reinforcing the contextual aspects of my work.
Booking the Courtyard Gallery at Ballroom Arts early enough has allowed time to consider how we might arrange the display and what would it be useful to change or add to improve the exhibition.
The exhibition will be a joint affair with my partner Linda Mayoux who will be exhibiting photographs of the Shingle Street area together with several books that combine her photography and poetry. This seems to be a perfect way that we can both benefit from providing context for each others work and creates a theme that is relevant for the exhibition space.
After having long discussions about how to approach the arrangements and curation we have decided that the overall title for the exhibition would be simply:
SHINGLE
We would then each have a sub-title relevant to our work and these will no doubt evolve nearer the time, but by keeping the title simple it allows for a wider range of work to be included and also keeps the exhibition relevant for Aldeburgh as well as Shingle Street.
In terms of publicity material we currently plan to produce a joint poster/flyer and have individual items as well. The gallery provides an A2 size poster case outside the gallery and two A2 size posters may be displayed in A boards near the entrance. I will need to remember that they require the posters and publicity material one month before the exhibition date as they issue press releases to “our social media, and as listings in a range of online arts and events sites which currently include Arts Council News, a-n news, Art Rabbit, Aldeburgh Gazette, Waveney & Blyth Arts website, Visit England website. As part of BallroomArts overall promotion, at our discretion, we may include details of shows in regional and national press.”
Having a dimensioned plan of the gallery is a great help in working out what space is available and together with photographs I have taken at other exhibitions at the site it is possible to get a reasonable idea of how things will look.
The plan at present is that in the main gallery room we will have one of the long walls each together with each side of the window in the end wall. This allows us to each decide on how much space we have and what this will mean for selecting the artworks.
One consideration that arose during discussions with my tutor was the idea that it is useful to have some smaller pieces especially when selling artworks as this will provide a wider range of possibilities for purchase. With this in mind and having been looking at the work of artists such as Helen Thomas, I have decided to create a series of smaller paintings (30 x 30 cm) that will still fit with the theme of ‘Shingle’ and are still relevant to the area including Aldeburgh.
The gallery also provides a range of plinths suitable for sculptures etc. and my plan is to use these to display the stones and shells that were used as the basis for my paintings giving a visual link between the physical and the abstract. We are also considering having a range of mounted prints of Linda’s work in a print rack and a selection of cards and/or postcards.
Throughout my studies I have sought to relate the art that I create to specific localities, endeavouring to not only capture the macro-scale view of the landscape but also the underlying fine detail that builds to create the essence of place.
In recent times I have been concentrating on the area of the Suffolk coast that stretches between Aldeburgh in the north down to Bawdsey in the south and in particular the small hamlet of Shingle Street. This small community of cottages sandwiched between salt marshes and sea holds a fascination that belies its size.
As artist who has recently been working on a similar project is the Yorkshire based painter Judith Tucker. She has been working with a small community on the North Lincolnshire coast known as the Humberstone Fitties, which like Shingle Street lies between salt marsh and the sea. Her series of paintings Night Fitties (2018 – 22) portray a group of cottages, shacks, old railway carriages and the like that together make up a community that looks very similar to Shingle Street.
Judith Tucker Why destroy a thing of beauty? 60 cm x 80 cm, oil on linen, 2019Judith Tucker. You knew what you had and how long you had it Oil on Canvas. 76cm x 101cm 2018
By choosing to depict night-time scenes Tucker has enhanced the feeling of seclusion of the cabins while at the same time the Union Jack flags help to create a sense of unity between the residents based around some idea of ‘Englishness’. The titles of her paintings are taken from snatches of conversations she has had with the local people.
She has also worked on the project with the poet Harriet Tarlo, a long time collaborator with Tucker, to create books and exhibitions related to the Fitties and the surrounding salt marshes.
Another Yorkshire based artist is Helen Thomas, an artist who likes to look into the close detail of a place. In particular her paintings depict the plants that colonise the edges and cracks of the built environment, the little reminders that nature will always reclaim what we build. She co-ordinated a major project that involved over 60 members of the public submitting images, photographs and paintings entitled ‘Dandelions and Double Yellows’ that looked at the urban plants that are more usually described as weeds and how they contribute to the biodiversity and colour of our built environment.
Helen Thomas Maybe Waldorf Way III (undated) Acrylic on paper (20 x 20 cm)Helen Thomas Groundsel, Cathedral Grounds (2021) Acrylic on paper (225 x 150 cm)
Thomas’s paintings got me thinking how difficult would it be to paint the plants that uniquely grow in the shingle along the coast as they part of the essence of Shingle Street. This has opened up a whole new line of thought in my work.
Using the overlooked, the ordinary, the parts of a place that do not attract attention as a subject for artworks is also a feature of the paintings of Narbi Price. This Newcastle based painter used the period of lockdown during the Covid crisis when travel was restricted to produce a series of paintings based on his local area that captured the strangeness of the time through the effect on the mundane.
Using photographs taken by his friends as source material he then developed photo-realist acrylic paintings of public benches that had been wrapped with tape to prevent people sitting on them. These images captured that period when the ordinary became the strange, but then after a while the new reality came to almost be the ordinary.
Narbi Price Untitled Bench Painting (Lockdown) 2021 Acrylic on panel (70 x 100 cm)Narbi Price Untitled Bench Painting (Lockdown) 3 2021 Acrylic on panel (70 x 100 cm)
Another artist who is inspired by the overlooked and the ordinary is Mandy Payne. Her work concentrates on the urban environment and in particular the sort of brutalist architecture exemplified by the Park Hill council estate in Sheffield. This work could seem a world away from the sort of environment that I have been studying, but it reflects her fascination with textures, surfaces and materiality and how these aspects create the sense of place.
Mandy Payne A Brief Window in Time Spray paint and oil on concrete (20 x 20 cm)Mandy Payne Remnants of a Welfare State Spray paint and oil on fibreglass reinforced concrete (90.5 x 41 cm)
I am interested in how she uses concrete as a support for her paintings, relating the subject matter to the process as I have in the past tried painting views of the Lake District on locally sourced slate.
An artist that I have long felt an affinity for (no pun intended) is Richard Long.
His practice involving solitary walks through the environment, recording what he sees, hears and feels, sometimes leaving small interventions, captures the sense of place in both physical and temporal dimensions. The process of walking from one point to another links the two locations creating new associations as well as highlighting differences. The encounters he records during the process create a map of intangibles that stand in contrast to the physical existence of the path walked.
My own work in Shingle Street involves walking the beach and in doing so I encounter the pebbles and shells that will form the basis for my paintings. Each one feels like a gift from the place challenging me to find the beauty that it holds.
Richard Long Walking in a Moving World (2001) Richard Long River of Riverstones (2022)
A very useful on-line tutorial as usual from Emma very much focussed of the actual process of painting. We discussed the use of glazes to create thin layers of paint with Emma suggesting I think about how the brush feeds the paint over the canvas. We agreed that I was relying too much on drawing with the paint rather than allowing the layers to build up.
We discussed the exhibition which is booked in for May at the Ballroom Arts gallery in Aldeburgh and the practical aspects that will need to be considered for the exhibition.
Action points
Be a bit more like a dancer – be attentive to your brush and how it meets the canvas. Try skating across the surface of the paint.
Build from your grisaille more radically so you are creating forms through layers rather than lines
Trip to St Ives in Cornwall – exhibitions, course and talks with artists.
A two-week trip to St Ives gave me a chance to visit some of the many galleries in the area. The largest of which is Tate St Ives which houses a collection of modernist works by people such as Peter Lanyon, Barbara Hepworth and others who lived and worked in St Ives together with other artists such as Joan Eardley. As the reason for my being in St Ives was to attend a course at the St Ives School of Painting looking at the work of Eardley, the chance to get a closer look at her work was keenly taken.
Salmon Net Posts Joan Eardley (1961-2)DetailDetail
Being able to view the paintings up close allows one to appreciate the brushwork and texturing of the artist, something that is difficult to appreciate when viewing a photograph.
As well as the permanent works there were two other exhibition events at the Tate, a major solo exhibition by Ad Minolti, (b.1980) an Argentinian artist who has created their ‘Biosfera Peluche’ work in the main gallery. This involved the repainting of the walls and floor in bright colours together with the creation of geometric installations and animalistic figures to create an alternative biosphere based on an interpretation of queer and feminist theories.
The other event also involved direct painting on the gallery walls as it involved creating a work by American minimalist and conceptual artist Sol Lewitt (1928 – 2007).
Curved and Straight Colour Bands (2004) Sol Lewitt
Works that require direct painting onto the gallery walls are obviously going to be different each time they are recreated depending on the space and the interpretation which can lead to discussions regarding originality.
While I was in Cornwall I also took the opportunity to visit Kurt Jackson’s gallery in St Just to see his latest works.
As with many of his previous exhibitions this dealt with a small geographical area, in this case the Helford River. He does much of the work en plein air before returning to the studio and usually works on large unstretched canvases laid on the ground. This means that there are often twigs, leaves and other detritus incorporated in the paintings.
Kurt Jakson A wader’s fluting call echoes up and down Frenchman’s Creek (2015) Mixed media on linen 198.5 x 226.5 cmDetail showing embedded leavesKurt Jackson Trevador (2022) Mixed media and collage on canvas 122 x 182 cmKurt Jackson Calamansack, Rain Stops, Tide Drops (2022) Oil on canvas board 60 x 60 cmDetail
Chats with artists:
Stephanie Sandercock
Back in St Ives I visited the Penwith Gallery where I came across the work of Stephanie Sandercock, she is originally from Preston but moved down to Cornwall about eight years ago. Her abstracts struck a chord with me and a book of her work was on sale at the gallery. A visit to her website revealed that she had a studio in the next street to where I was staying and that she welcomed visitors so I called around the next day.
The book had revealed that she drew her inspiration from the rocks near her home on the coast, in particular the rocks in the cliff at Gwydian. We chatted about the patterns and textures to be found in rocks and stones and she explained her technique of using different t
ypes of plaster to build texture and applying layers of acrylic paint that are then sanded down and carved into to create the desired effect. She also uses thin sheets of mica that she obtains from the cliffs embedded into the paintings to create a reflective surface.
We also talked about promoting her work and getting prints, greeting cards etc. made and she gave me copies of several magazines that had featured her work. All in all she is not only a very good artist but also a thoroughly nice person.
A second visit to the Penwith Gallery led to a meeting with another artist working with stones but this time as a sculptor. It transpired that although now living down on the Lizard he was originally from Cambridge and had learnt his stone carving skills as an apprentice with a local building firm. Needless to say this led to long reminiscences about Cambridge pubs that have now closed and the lack of gallery facilities that are available for contemporary artists in the city.
He explained how he works with different soapstones from around the UK which give him a variety of textures and colours which he then combines within his pieces.
St Ives School of Painting Course –
“Joan Eardley: Land Sea and People” with Jill Eisele
This was a three day course at the Porthmeor Studios looking at the work of Joan Eardley both in terms of her paintings of people, especially children, in Glasgow and her work in the coastal village of Catterline. It was this latter subject that interested me most as Catterline shares many similarities with Shingle Street.
It was very much a hands-on course using a diverse range of media and techniques which we started by looking at her approach to figures:
Charcoal and pastel on paperAcrylic paint over collaged material
A series of experiments with poured India ink and acrylic paint that resulted in some amazing textures and patterns:
Looking at Eardley’s landscapes and seascapes:
Oil bars worked over written script
A series of seascapes from beach level using charcoal and chalk:
And finally, a seascape from a high vantage point:
View from The Island St Ives Oil on board
This was painted using a palette knife and a limited ‘Zorn’ palette consisting of just cadmium red, cadmium yellow, ivory black and titanium white.
Cornish take-aways (and not just the pasties):
Two weeks spent in a town so saturated with art and artists is bound to have some sort of effect. Having the chance to not only see contemporary art at close quarters but to be able to talk to the artists themselves has been a useful experience. Seeing Stephanie Sandercock’s work and having the chance to talk to her has boosted my enthusiasm for my work using the textures and patterns that I find in stones. Spending a few hours with a sketchbook and camera among the rocks and cliffs on Porthmeor beach has given me a collection of source material if I wanted to expand my geographical range beyond the shingle coast of Suffolk. Her use of different types of plaster to create textures on the canvas also made me think back to some of the work I had done previously with assemblages and maybe I could combine some of those ideas with the work that I’m currently undertaking.
My work is currently based around the sights, textures and colours of the shingle coastline of Suffolk. I use the pebbles of the beaches together with the material that forms the basis of the physical substance of the area to create a sense of place. The patterns that one finds amongst the stones, the shells, the rusty metal and the palimpsest of the oft-repainted structures that make up the fabric of the coastline provide a source of inspiration for my paintings.
With this in mind I have been visiting galleries in the local area to get a feel for the options for exhibitions and to see how other artists present their work. The main artistic centres along that part of the coast are the towns of Aldeburgh and the Maltings at Snape. Aldeburgh has several commercial galleries that represent local artists and two larger sites, one of which is the Aldeburgh Lookout and Art House. This consists of a large house on the seafront which forms a gallery and is run by international art dealer Caroline Wiseman, and a second building the Lookout Tower which is on the beach itself where members of the Arts Club Aldeburgh Beach hold individual exhibitions. It has to be said that the membership of the club seems to be a rather select group featuring people such as Antony Gormley, Peter Blake RA, Maggi Hambling, Anthony Horowitz, etc etc.
The second major site is another gallery, formerly known as the Peter Pearce Gallery it has been totally re-furbished over the past two years and is now known as Ballroom Arts. This also overlooks the beach and consists of two sections, upstairs is the large main gallery but downstairs there is a second gallery known as the Courtyard Gallery.
This is ideal for solo or small group exhibitions and given its location next to the beach would be an ideal site for my degree show exhibition. At my last visit to the gallery I was able to chat to one of the exhibiting artists who, by sheer coincidence, turned out to be a good friend of one of our neighbours back in Cambridge. I was able therefore to get some good advice and information regarding hiring the gallery, including the recommendation that early booking was advisable. This turned out to be valuable advice.
Ballroom Arts AldeburghCourtyard Gallery interior (exhibition by Honor Surie and Dan Hussey)
The ‘white cube’ style of gallery would I feel provide the best way of displaying my works and the size of the gallery means that I could fit several of my larger pieces along one wall to have maximum impact and to catch the eye of people walking past the large glass doors opposite to the long wall.
Courtyard Gallery, Ballroom Arts Aldeburgh (Paintings by Honor Surie, Furniture by Dan Hussey)
Details of the application process and the outcome will follow in a later post.
