‘Insights/In site’ at Wheal Martyn

Wheal Martyn is proud to be hosting an exhibition by local artists Stuart Thorn and Jenny Beavan who have shown their paintings and ceramics, profiling the immediate china clay area involving indigenous materials, for the last 9 years.

The unique man-made landscape created by the china clay industry inspired Stuart and Jenny’s body of work included in the current exhibition entitled ‘Insights/In-sites.’

Born in Bude, Stuart Thorn studied Fine Art at Redruth and Falmouth School of Art and throughout his career in graphic design always had a life-long love of painting.   “My landscapes are an interpretation of the elements I observe. Sketches and paintings are executed in the studio from memory and brief on-the-spot notations. In this sense they are ‘abstract’ – not direct renditions of the subject. In the paintings that evolve in the studio I am concerned to capture the essential character, rhythm and formal relationship of landscape and not accurate detail.”

Jenny Beavan is particularly interested in natural changes – decay, disintegration and reformation - especially the role water has in these changes. She regularly visits china clay pits and observes man’s harnessing of water power for the purposes of china clay extraction. She seeks to portray the versatility and the power of both porcelain and water; they share the same ‘free spirit,’ determining their own life force/equilibrium by defying unnatural pressures to be tamed. The porcelain and china clay is combined which causes tension in the drying process depicting the geological changes impacted by the water.

Their current artistic exhibition inspired by the china clay country, ingeniously entitled ‘Insights/In sites’ will be open to the public daily from 10.00am to 5.00pm throughout the month of September.

JO DOWNS

1 October to 31 October 2010