Click above to see large images.

Lineage series, mixed media

Lineage

The pieces produced for the show Lineage at the Newlyn Gallery used copper scratched and drawn into with salt and graphite, to create a time- based work. The intensely re-active nature of the copper ensured continual change and development in the surface appearance of the plates during their appearance in the gallery. This was in keeping with the concept behind the Lineage exhibition in which the selected artists developed a contemporary response to a chosen piece of work or aspect of the Newlyn School.

In 1898 the Industrial Class was formed in Newlyn, by the artists, to teach the fishermen to work with copper, when the weather prevented them going to sea. Newlyn Copper became very much a part of the Newlyn School collection.

Taking this successful collaboration of the artists and fishermen as a starting point, I condensed the impressions gleaned from my research down to three basic elements.

1. Copper itself.

2. Salt, referring to the sea, obviously, but also to the cart loads that preserved the pilchards, spread like snow over the fish lain out on the cobbles all around the harbour, essential to the fishermen’s livelihood.

3. Graphite, which references the artists. They too would have been much in evidence on a walk aound the harbour, as they worked 'plien air' using the fishermen, their work and their families as the subject of their paintings."