From the studio...
We recently welcomed 2 groups of artists to our Autumn painting courses in Porthleven, held in the fabulous Old Lifeboat House studio, located opposite the iconic clocktower. As always, we began each course with a visit to the galleries in St. Ives to check out the competition! I asked the artists to look specifically at 'scale', both the relevance of the size of the artworks themselves and scale of the elements and marks within. Each year, I try to have a different theme for the courses, so for the Autumn courses, tying in with the extraordinary Liliane Lijn exhibition at Tate St. Ives, the artists were asked to consider the idea of the figure in the landscape and the abstract-figure, with the possibilities of narrative or simply as a means to suggest scale. On our return the studio, we had a group painting exercise, the challenge of exploring 'scale' on a very small canvas!
Karen Martin's 'Scale' painting
On both courses, the sun shone brightly on Sunday morning for our drawing session around the harbour. Drawing is a critical element on all our courses: after the drawing session, we are studio-based with the paintings informed by our drawings, by ideas, intuition and the wealth of art history. After lunch, I gave a talk about the idea of the figure in landscape painting, looking at Van Gogh, Soutine, De Kooning, Keith Vaughn, Leon Kossoff, with some examples in my own work. Then it was time for my first demonstration - the beginning of Porthleven 85! - translating a simple drawing inspired by the walk around the harbour. Full of ideas and inspiration, our artists then started their own paintings.
The next few days were intense: painting, talking about painting, thinking about painting, with our subject, close at hand and ever changing. A charged creative environment, with plenty of one-to-one tuition and further demonstrations. And the paintings emerged: strong, surprising and highly individulistic, as it should be.
On Wednesday afternoon, we cleared the studio to prepare for Thursday's finale, a one day exhibition open to the public, a chance for the artists to talk about the work during the week, and, as always, very well received. Porthleven never fails to inspire but as artists, we have do something with it, make a personal statement, in paint, about our Porthleven, an ambition realised as you can see in the work in the galleries below. Hats off to the artists!
Exhibition
GALLERY / SEPTEMBER COURSE
GALLERY/ OCTOBER COURSE
