SILENCE SPEAKS - The Poly, Falmouth, Cornwall 2014
In 2010 moves started for us to relocate our business from Dartmouth to Gweek, Cornwall. In 2012 we left Dartmouth on our boat Martha Primrose with our two children Lily and Skye ( then aged 4 and 6) and sailed to The Helford River and up to Gweek Boatyard. Having been left to its own devises for some years, the boatyard was an imaginative and inspiring place, full of empty corners, old boats, quirky individuals and sense of forgotten freedom of time past. I discovered the empty space of The Long Barn and was fortunate enough to use this as my studio. I had it in mind to create a series of large portraits of boat builders; figurative pieces with abstract background, show piecing the characters and world of wooden boat building as I had known over the past 8 years. I completed 7 of the 12 paintings I hoped to complete, and with time running out (that's another story) I exhibited them at The Poly in Falmouth in 2014. I also showed landscape and still life, and some photography and lino cuts with poems I had written. It was a success and I sold many pieces but never really felt I had fully completed my vision of this project. The 7 paintings were of: Andy Cornish caulking, Kim Ballard riveting in the beam shelf, Nick Rolf fitting a stem, myself puttying, Jon Albrecht as rigger, Jon Bray building Unity and Ashley Butler cutting the rabbit.
THE BEACH HUT GALLERY, Whitstable, Kent 2004-2006
In 2004 I moved in freezing January to a small fisherman's cottage on the sea front in Whitstable Kent. Attached to this old bargeman's cottage, by way of a hole in the actual cottage wall, was a black boarded beach hut with characterful yellow door and an array of interesting old tins and ropes which I gleefully added too. From the french doors of this beach hut the sea at high tide was only feet away on the other side of the quay wall. In winter the snow would fall and settle over the shoarmal between low and high tide and then then sea would melt it away as it came up the beach! With the east and northery wind blasting over, despite years of living in drafty unheated flats in Edinburgh, bivvying in Scottish winter hills and snow on the decks, this still remains the coldest place I have ever lived. The light and character of Kent was unbelievable. By the time Spring arrived, the empty seafront of Whitstable changed with day visitors and holiday makers as well as locals. I had been painting in the beach hut as a studio space whilst also working as a teacher and setting up Butler & Co. With the passing footfall past my beach hut I decided to open it as a gallery and exhibited and sold my own oil and water colour paintings and photographs as well as exhibiting photographs by the awesome Den Philips. www.denphillipsphotos.com. It was so much fun but sadly only have a few photographs of my work from this time at The Beach Hut Gallery.
