Mike Thorpe – Newlyn Society of Artists

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NOA

25/09/2023

From NSA Instagram

4 NSA artists have had work selected and hung in t

4 NSA artists have had work selected and hung in the St Ives Society Winter open exhbition; these pictures were taken at yesterday's PV. The show is open until 1st January. Much to see there of all stripes, shapes and sizes!

#heathermcalpineartist #johngarbutt #tanyakrzywinska #pedleyvivian #stivessocietyofartists #marinersgallery

Here's the last episode in our interview with NSA

Here's the last episode in our interview with NSA artist Rachael Reeves. Thank you Rachael for your insights and heart-searched words.

Do you listen to music when you work?

Yes alot, I have very eclectic tastes; Bowie, Holiday, Gil Scott Heron, Wardruna, John Martyn, Blur, Stan Getz, Reich, Etta James, Winehouse, JJ Cale, Billie Eilish, Koop and I love BBC radio 3 Nighttracks; my spotify account just keeps growing.

What would you take to the desert island?

I think it would have to be a non-ending supply of streamed music or a creature as company, can I have both? If not then I will go for the music as the creature may die and I will be sad. Music is both transformational and transportive, it connects me to feelings of joy, memories, laughter, tears and to fears, hopes and dreams. Oh yes and it makes me dance!

My superpower: To make every single person on this planet be kind to one another, truly kind, forever.

Inspirational place: The Sky, The Land and The Sea.

What do you think the role of the artist is in this culture? We transport people, that is our role.

What 3 words sums up your recent work?

Still lives:
Dramatic Illuminated Vessels

Landscape ink drawings:
Esturial Watery Tonal

Collage pieces:
Shape Line Colour

#contemporaryartists
#cornishartists
#cornishartistsandmakers
#contemporarycornishart
#intheartistsstudio
#rachaelreeves #rachaelreevesartist

The penultimate episode in our interview with NSA

The penultimate episode in our interview with NSA artist Rachel Reeves:

What is your favourite medium Rachael?

I work across many mediums, it really depends on what I am doing. I love oils, the glazing, layering, silky smooth and butteryness of them, acrylic paint can be fabulously loose and liberating (although I am questioning the use of them and their impact on the environment) . When I draw outside I love ink as its so watery and painterly and I can work very spontaneously allowing for the quality of the medium to influence the images. And when I am just wanting to play with colour, shape and form then painted papers and lots of different media play a huge part. I enjoy smooth surfaces to work on, I have never liked canvas. Paper is my preferred choice although I do love a gessoed board. I used to be a gilder and so the traditional gessoing of the surface is becoming important again for me.

Do you set yourself goals as part of your practice?

I used to set myself goals. I will see how I work moving forward. I am beginning to occasionally write creatively and I am also dancing in various workshops with a mixture of choreographers leading these and so dance and the written word may become an important part of my practice. I am no longer happy shutting myself away in my studio, its ok sometimes and an important part of who I am, but connecting to others is becoming a big part of me. As well as teaching, I work in the community as a tutor/facilitator at a Health and Wellbeing charity and this is a very important part of my week and very dear to my heart.

What's the best piece of advice you have to give other artists?

Be honest, do not emulate others, be your true authentic self, do not be governed by or play to the ‘likes’. Put your phone down. Look, listen.
Its ok to have time away from making, this is important, the thinking, the looking, the dreaming, the reading, this is all important, don’t think this stops you being an artist.

#contemporaryartists
#cornishartists
#cornishartistsandmakers
#contemporarycornishart
#intheartistsstudio

Here's your next in our fascinating interview with

Here's your next in our fascinating interview with NSA artist Rachael Reeves. How do you do what you do?

With the organic subject matter of growth, came decay. I have always had a fascination with decay and our human frailty This has come to light more in my more recent pieces of work. I watched my father die and was with him by his side, quietly watching and holding his hand. During the hours and hours of time I spent with him and after he died I became so incredibly aware of how being with him over those months was all very much part of life, that its the interconnectedness of life and death that makes us. So I think my work is also about this life and death, the light and the dark (Image 1,2 ), the black and the white.
The natural world is still key and recently I feel my link to this has become stronger and deeper. I have worked with shamanism and also attended many family constellation gatherings, both deeply fascinating and no doubt the beginnings of my unravelling. I am not entirely sure how or where my work will manifest. I am exploring through plein air, estuaries and creeks. (Image 3) Somehow these have some bodily resonance with me. The rivers and estuaries are veins of water traversing through our landscape, they connect the land to the sea. I swim regularly and I am very aware of the power of the sea its force and its ability to hold and support me in a multi layering of ways.
My work also holds aspects of stillness and quiet contemplation, this is important to me. I have been interested in spaces that may elude to a sense of unease, a sense of aloneness. (image 4). We are all ultimately alone and sometimes this can be wonderful, sometimes frightening and always deeply important. As I grow older quiet spaces really matter.
However I can feel a rage emerging too and I am not entirely sure where this will go yet. I am finding that I and many others are feeling a disconnect in this narcissistic and unjust world. I have not quite worked out whether to leave this rage to manifest itself in positive action or whether to bring it into the studio, perhaps I will have no choice, it may just take me where it needs to go.

#contemporaryart #cornishart

Here's the next isntallment of our interview with

Here's the next isntallment of our interview with NSA artist, Rachael Reeves. More tomorrow.

3. What themes do you often return to in your work?

So my work; well I think its a need within me to feel connected. Now that connection can come in many ways, through actively connecting with the materials and the process. With wanting to connect to others through the images; hoping I guess that there is some resonance within some of the images for others to relate to and also a need to actually sometimes physically connect the images together (Image 1,2,3) I don’t think I have done this enough and maybe this is my next stage. I often feel the need to go beyond the page, or edge and to take the line, shape, image out to touch something else. In my undergraduate years I made paper pieces that just grew and grew, my subject was the natural world and so this related very much to the organic/growth of the subject matter but also to the growth of the piece of work. I enjoyed the use of paper as I could tear and control its shape with the only restriction being the space I was working in. The pieces I used to make involved step ladders, I enjoyed the physicality of the largeness of these pieces. I continued to make very large pieces, moving onto canvas and (then) making very large stretchers (probably quite badly). One of the workshops at Coventry, where I did my BA, was stretcher making - an invaluable lesson in the life of a painter. This image is from a one person show in London soon after my Chelsea MA; the painting was aproximately 10 x 5 foot. (image 4).

#contemporaryart
#contemporarypainting
#contemporarylandscape
#rachaelreevesartist

We continue our interview with NSA artist Rachael

We continue our interview with NSA artist Rachael Reeves today following on from our question posted yesterday.

How do you do what you do Rachael?

When I am stuck or need a break from slower work I work with collage; (Images 1 and 2,) these collages offer me a way to experiment, work more spontaneously with shape, form, colour, texture and materials. I am an abstract artist at heart and so I also take time out to create spontaneous colourful works on paper (Image 3) the formal qualities of abstraction are at the heart of how I construct any image, my slower paintings always begin with simple shapes that are thoughtfully composed. The details and message, if there is one, comes later.

#rachaelreevesartist #contemporaryart
#cornishartists #contemporarydrawing
#collageart #collage

The second part of our interview with NSA artist R

The second part of our interview with NSA artist Rachael Reeves.

How do you do what you do?

This is a tricky question as at the moment I am on ‘pause’, going gently. I have had an incredibly challenging 18 months. I am on pause at the moment, in a reflective space, taking life in.
As an ageing still working woman, mother and daughter I have found the demands of life often quite overwhelming and the energy involved in holding can often leave me with not so much available for actively making. This may pass as I give myself more ‘pause’ times and I may find that my practice moves into a rhythm of high and low activity.
I am still in the midst of some kind of change and have not fully emerged, I feel the world has altered and I am adapting to this. In Sept 22 I took one year unpaid leave from my teaching role. This gave me some breathing space and enabled me to spend more time in my studio and to experience a looser and more creative life. However I continued to have recurring periods of deeply difficult times and it has not really been until June of this year that I have found some equilibrium.

I generally begin the day swimming in the sea and then I feel my way into my studio days. Before February 22 I would be immensely boundaried around my studio time, and no matter how I felt I would force myself to be working, however this does not work for me these days, and so now I am much kinder on myself and listen to what is going on for me.

So my time may be spent out in the landscape working plein air on loose ink drawings, these connect me to where I live, as I moved around so much as a child, my home and close environment is immensely important to me. (Image 3, 4) If I find myself in the studio I will work on much more considered and constructed paintings that take time and are slow to create, some of the recent paintings have been based on still lives which have come from an interest in the interior pieces I made during lock down. These still lives have also been an important reconnection with my late father as some of the pieces feature the pots he made with his hands, my re making these with my own hands connect me to him.
#contemporaryart
#cornishartists

Today we begin the first of series in interivew wi

Today we begin the first of series in interivew with NSA Artist, Rachael Reeves.

Rachael, How did you start making art?
I was brought up in a creative household, my father was a potter and eventually became Head of Ceramics at The Central School of Art and Design in London. He always had a studio at home and so I was used to being around his pots and drawings. We moved around a lot but some of my earliest memories were visiting him at Central and having lunch in the student canteen ‘Rosies’ where I soaked up the scruffy art school atmosphere.

Before this at school in landlocked Bedfordshire the art teacher was always telling me that I really needed to think about going onto study art. I was fairly nonplussed; boys, messing about on my bike, and cars were my main inerests! I rebelled and failed my Art A level, in fact I failed all my A levels as I was not interested in studying, my parents were going through a divorce and I was an angry teenager.

I did however eventually see sense and went onto a foundation course at Barnfield College Luton which was run by a most fabulous and inspiring character called Tony Slyn and then onto Coventry Polytechnic and Chelsea School of Art to do my MA.

It was not really until my 2nd undergraduate year, after taking 2 years out to travel and work that I found my drive to immerse myself in the world of making art. I came back into the second year at Coventry with huge amounts of energy and excitement and threw myself into making work inspired from the natural environment. Initially drawing from organic form (inspired at the time from Sutherland's drawings) and then going onto creating very large organically shaped paintings on paper of forms bursting out into the studio space and covering the walls.

#rachaelreevesartist #contemporaryart
#cornishartists #contemporarydrawing

Ashley Hanson, Seamus Moran, Barbara Karn, Andrew

Ashley Hanson, Seamus Moran, Barbara Karn, Andrew Swan and Pat Wilson Smith – five NSA artists in full flight giving fascinating insights into their work in the NSA Showcase 2023 @Tremenheerescultpure gardens last Saturday. Many thanks to them and to Dr Virginia Button for her presentation which followed the artists’ talks – a thought provoking and informative perspective on the Artists’ Society in a Rural Community, which was followed by a lively discussion. The exhibition continues until Sunday November 5th – if you haven’t already, please come and see it!

@ashleyhanson.art @seamus7160 @barbara.karn @andrewswanartist @pwilsonsmith @tremenheeresculpturegardens
#nsanewlyn #cornishartist #tremenheeresculpturegardens

Latest News

SHOWCASE 202325/09/2023 - 10:23 pm
NOA25/09/2023 - 9:57 pm
3 St Ives Painters – Exhibition21/07/2023 - 10:15 am
Engage – NSA Spring ’23 exhibition05/04/2023 - 8:32 pm
painting with earth05/04/2023 - 8:30 pm

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