From the studio No.31 (17th Mar 2024) →

A glimpse from my trip to Edinburgh for

Visual Arts Scotland - Then and Now: 100 Years of VAS

It was great to visit the old city where I spent 4 years of my life as a student - humming with new coffee shops, tourists, bag pipes and creativity. Visiting this exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy was thrilling, it is a very large and glamorous space - I sipped prosecco and mingled with new artist friends from deep within the Highlands. It was a beautifully hung show with each room hung according to colour. It worked.

Apparently my second cousin was showing a painting there too (we both went to Edinburgh college of art, she was 3 years above me) plus a cohort from Cornwall (from a Cornwall-Scotland residency exchange). But alas we didn’t know and we didn’t meet. Shame.

Below are some images from the event.

Prosodic Chapters Of Immanent Silence 2022

Oak gall ink and gesso on panel; 122 x 122cm

This painting, was selected from over 1500 entries. 242 artists were showcased. Using my signature paint, made from locally foraged oak galls, I have made the painting with traditional gesso on sustainable poplar wood panel.

During the exhibition there was also a room showing work 30x30cm from all members of VAS, all under £250. This is a travelling show and next visits Borders Art Fair click for catalogue.

Exhibition photography - Instagram: @robin_mair_photography @colinhattersleyphoto & me.

Website: VisualArtsScotland.org

Instagram: @visual.arts.scotland

Twitter: @VisualArtsScot

Facebook:Visual Arts Scotland

From the studio No.30 →

It’s been a busy week with a trip to Hermon, Pembrokeshire, Wales and a trip to Newlyn, Cornwall.

In West Wales where I live, I was invited, along with 8 other creative practitioners, to talk about my creative practice, during a day of celebration of 'Making New Connections' on International Women's Day. Nearly 50 artists, makers, creatives from Wales brought together to give talks, partake in workshops, connect and share food, held in the new beautiful timber framed studio @ystiwdio and Hermon Village Hall. This part of the day was a Petcha Kucha, where creatives are given a 7-9 minute slot to give a slideshow and talk about their practice. Well actually, since I have a recently and beautifully made studio documentary by Huw Richards Photography, made in conjunction with my solo exhibition at Elysium Gallery in 2023, I played that on the big screen. It duration is 9mins, so perfect, not a lot of talking from me!

A special thank you/diolch to the steering group members @lindanorrisgallery @lisaevansstudio @pip_a_lewis_ @stirlingsteward @msbaker101, helpers on the day, the wonderful artists who delivered presentations and our photographer Dion Cowe @stoneandivy.photo

Making New Connections - Creu Cysylltiadau Newydd supported by the Arts Council of Wales Sharing Together Fund @celfcymruarts

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The very next day I was down in Newlyn, adjascent to Penzance, in Cornwall. There the fantastic independent Newlyn School of Art resides in an old school, started in 2011 and runs many many courses in fine art, mostly painting - such as is Newlyn’s tradition - taught by many of the best-known artists working in Cornwall today. Newlyn’s history is mainly of being a fisher town but also in the 1880’s a artist colony was established and in 1899 the Forbes School of Painting was founded by Elizabeth and Stanhope Forbes in the famous Anchor Studio in Newlyn.

I was invited for the weekend, as a visiting artist, to tutor on the year long mentoring programme. I had a fantastic time, it was so much fun and seriously, what a super course it is. I screened my two films including the exhibition tour and gave a 45 minute talk about my studio practice on the Sunday. The talk followed a journey of studio practice, beginning with my first solo exhibition at Belgrave St. Ives, to my 4th exhibition with the gallery, to leaving Cornwall in a converted luton box truck, my ‘Nomadic Studio’ on a 5 month travelling residency to the Highlands of Scotland, to landing in an 80 acre oak woodland in West Wales where I ventured to make my practice more sustainable, to my most recent solo exhibition in 2023, showing 5 years of work across 4 large galleries, all using botanical colour, foraged or home-grown to make paints, inks and dyes.

Driven by an inspiring course leader Jesse Leroy Smith, I was also working alongside fellow artists Marie Claire Hamon and Kate Walters.

For my third day in Cornwall, Jesse invited me to hang some of my work in one of the studios to set up for a filmed interview. Shot by film-maker Alban Roinard, another artist whom I met during my time living 10 years in West Cornwall, interviewed by Jesse, fuelled by good coffee and croissants, we had a blast. The interview will be available through the Newlyn School of Art programme where they are building a resource of artists, curators, gallerists and art practitioners.

What a weekend, who knew working could be so fun!

From the studio No.29 (4th Feb 2024) →

It’s 4th of February as I write this and the new year has careered into place, there is always a settling in period I find and a hopeful promise of snow. This is just a short missive to let you know a bit about the current exhibition that I have a piece of work in.

Prosodic Chapters Of Immanent Silence 2022

Oak gall ink and gesso on panel ; 122x122cm

The above painting has been accepted into the Visual Arts Scotland - Then and Now: 100 Years of VAS at the Royal Scottish Academy.

I am excited and grateful to have my painting included in this landmark exhibition. It's a substantial piece at 122 x 122cm and was selected from over 1500 entries. 242 artists will be showcased. Using my signature paint, made from locally foraged oak galls, I have made the painting with traditional gesso on sustainable poplar wood panel.

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A little background history - Who are VAS?

On a winter’s eve in Edinburgh, 1924, Visual Arts Scotland (VAS) held their first-ever meeting, becoming early pioneers of inclusivity within Scotland’s artistic landscape. One-hundred years later, the organisation has grown into a leading platform for national and international artists and now celebrates its centenary with a year packed full of opportunities for its members. To kick off 2024’s celebrations, VAS are holding their biggest-ever exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, showcasing work from the finest contemporary artists across Scotland and beyond. THEN AND NOW: 100 YEARS OF VISUAL ARTS SCOTLAND will showcase over 300 artworks, with art ranging from ceramics, paintings, mixed media, photography, sculpture, and a variety of contemporary art forms.

VAS has seen a lot of growth and change over the past 100 years. The organisation began as The Scottish Society of Women Artists in 1924 with the aim to empower women after their contribution to the war effort. In the early 90s, the organisation’s name changed to Scottish Artists and Artist Craftsmen to embrace the high-quality experimental crafts taking place.

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The painting has already been collected by courier and I head off to Edinburgh next week to join it and shmooze with the best. Hmm, now the next problem…what to wear.

FROM THE STUDIO NO.28 (18th Jun 2023)

My solo exhibition is Officially open and continues until 1st July.

Updates on my website show installation images of the exhibition and there is also a video tour. I think Huw the film-maker has done another great job of putting it together. www.sarahpoland.co.uk

Click on the image to watch the film.

From the studio No.27 (7th May 2023)

It’s May the 5th and I’m up late updating my website. It’s all about my solo exhibition now, so much to do, many people to liaise with regarding the gallery. The last month in the build up to a show has little to do with making the work and I’m glad I started a month before this. This is a big one! The gallery have dropped an extra (large) gallery room last minute…it’s ok. I’m not turning out the lights in that room, I have work, I just have to get it into an exhibition state. Pressure and opportunity on.

The exhibition opening is on 20th May 6-8.30pm.

I have a week to hang the show and once up I will have installation shots taken which I will duly add to my website. On 23rd May there will be a live online ‘in conversation’ event with Mark Halliday which will be edited afterwards to include Welsh subtitles and available for replay online the Elysium Gallery website and on my Youtube channel (yes really, I have a channel!)

Below is an Official Exhibition Invitation.

About the exhibition

Silence - The Messenger And The Metaphor has grown over five years and there are four main parts to the exhibition.

I think of the flat panel paintings as portals in present time, to timelessness and infinite possibility, to oceanic states. In the main painting room I have included fragments of text from Notebooks Of Eurydice by late painter Partou Zia, a text I has been ‘in conversation’ with throughout the project. (1)

The two installation pieces, Forest and Shape Shifter - Bird Lover, have grown from a context of painting but they're in that realm of time and space, where the viewer can walk through, become a part of the work. It can create a sentient experience. Forest, a hanging canvas installation has a mass to it, yet you can enter, get body to body with it, find different view-points and become a part of it. It's like an immersion in an environment where for example, there is no horizon line in particular, there is sensation and hopefully connection. Cloth has so much inherent potential, so I've hung them together or made clothes or put them on a line - the washing line for me evokes a domestic safe space, a place of timelessness, meditation and potential.  

The final room shows collage of painted botanical colour on paper or panel with Moon Drawings. These photographic drawings I make during a full moon, using a long exposure with the moon as a light source.

Part of the process is working with seasons and cycles, of nature and of my own. Some processes take days, weeks or months even, and in that, there is a deeper sense of time. .

(1) Several years ago, painter Richard Cook, in Newlyn, Cornwall, gave me a copy of the manuscript (since part published in a compendium) by his late wife, Persian painter, Partou Zia. It has been a companion, a conversation, over the last few years. I have found it beautiful and profound, of a kind of truth and of human experience. I also found that it has helped deepen my understanding of my own work. The similarities of approach to practice and the sacred drew me to want to collaborate with it - Zia lived by the sea and its magic, light and energy come out clearly in her work.

In the mean time, here is a little taster for you - I mentioned a studio documentary in my last newsletter - it will also be screened during the exhibition. The documentary was made by film-maker and actor Huw Novelli. He had three cameras with him including a drone and I think he’s done a great job in capturing the space and making sense of it all. He was also really nice to work with.

Do let me know your thoughts on all of this, your feedback is always appreciated.

FROM THE STUDIO NO.25 (18th Dec 2022)

Seasons greetings and I hope you are keeping warm,

I last wrote at the end of October and now we are fully wintering. It’s been -10 here in my corner of Wales, very slippery and very beautiful.

It’s been a great year in the studio and I’ve had some wonderful moments out on the exhibition scene and met lovely new people. I finally started a newsletter, kept it going and have received some lovely and encouraging messages from you.

Over the last month I’ve had my head down and hands in dye pots in between running a workshop series at Elysium Gallery in Swansea. I had a fantastic time there, sharing and exploring techniques in making willow charcoal, botanical inks, natural dyes as well as how to make a frame for a canvas. There will be more of those during my exhibition.

Every moment counts now towards my solo exhibition next year and this month the studio has been a flurry of textile colour, drying, ironing, sewing, painting, all finishing off a large installation piece for the exhibition. Below are some glimpses into the changing space.

And for a bit of fun, click on the button below to see a short studio time-lapse video.

From the studio No.23 (16th Oct 2022)

In the studio I'm working on deciding which text to display on the wall for my solo exhibition next year at Elysium Gallery.

The words are from a text written by the late Persian painter Partou Zia. I met her when I lived in Cornwall. I remember going to the talk she gave during her solo exhibition at Tate St. Ives and was blown away by how articulate, how intelligent and how sparkling her energy was.

Her husband painter Richard Cook gave me a copy of the manuscript a few years after her passing. He was so right when he said he thought I might resonate with it.

I have read the text many times with each time discovering something completely new about it and myself.

While working towards my solo exhibition 'Silence: The Messenger and The Metaphor', I have this text with me. The idea is not to illustrate it or to make the work about it but more partner with it, to keep me accountable. The phrases, thoughts and ideas within it are profound, philosophical and poetic. I would say it is in part ontological prose about truth and beauty.

More will be revealed at a later date.

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Update on the RWA 169th Autumn Annual Open Exhibition

This show for the Royal West of England Academy is the equivalent to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. I said in my last newsletter that I had two large paintings selected but not necessarily hung.

Well…they were both hung!

I attended Varnishing Day, the artists' private view, which was such an inspiring opportunity to meet other artists. What was particularly amazing was that nearly every single person in the room was an artist. What an energy of creative solidarity. I looked around with a knowing that we all work away mostly on our own, believing in it, not believing in it, and doing it no matter what.

The image below shows my yellow stripe painting, Prosodic Chapters Of Immanent Silence, which was hung next to several paintings of invited artist Matthew Burrows MBE and President of the RWA Fiona Robinson PRWA below mine. What company I am in. Burrows was one of the selectors as well as invited artist and the curator was Fiona Robinson PRWA.

It's the top spot in the main room on the end wall. You can see it as soon as you walk in and even at the private view, with hundreds of people, it was hung high enough to be seen above everybody's heads. It was soo exciting!

3756 works were submitted by 2082 artists. The curation of this show really is astonishing, I don’t know how she and her team did it, so difficult to make it coherent. It is a really great show, one of the best yet I think.

Top right - Prosodic Chapters Of Immanent Silence 122 x 122cm

Top left - Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time 122 x 122cm

I'm still pinching myself that both large paintings were actually hung!

And by-the-way, I went for a SRFace wetsuit in the end. A new start-up from the Netherlands, well priced, sell only wetsuits and are made from Yulex, the plant-based neoprene that I mentioned before. I am VERY pleased with it. I spent last weekend on a women’s surf retreat in Pembrokeshire, just down the road from where I live and was as cosy as a seal. I even had a baby seal pop up next to me!

Cornish coastal wear company Finisterre also do good planet friendly Yulex wetsuits.

From the studio No.22 (4th Oct 2022)

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 (2nd Oct 2022)

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 (24th September 2022)

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 (10th Sept 2022)

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 (24th Jul 2022)

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!

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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