Tregardock and the Atlantic Coast: Tim Steward
'The wild sea of North Cornwall'... An intensive body of work from Tim Steward recorded over six years of living and working on the North Cornwall coast. Working outside and carving up shapes using large brushes, the pieces document a journey of immersion in the landscape; a stripped-back and visceral response to the beauty and charge of nature.
PRIVATE VIEW
Join Tim Steward at the gallery for a 'glass of bubbles'
Friday 10 November, 6 - 9 pm - All welcome
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Tim Steward will be in Residence at the Gallery with his sketchbooks to hand from Friday 17 to Sunday 26th November.
ARTIST TALK - The Art of Place - Saturday 18th Nov, 10.30 am to Noon
Join Tim Steward for a greater insight into his art practice,
all welcome, no need to book
WORKSHOP - 'Drawing your own wild seascape" - Saturday 25th Nov, 2 - 4 pm
£20.00 per person, materials included, please contact the gallery for more information / to book a place on this wonderful masterclass.
EXHIBITION IS OPEN BY APPOINTMENT FROM 27th to 3 DECEMBER
‘THE WILD SEA, NORTH CORNWALL
For the last six years Tim Steward has been working on a specific stretch of the Atlantic Coast called Tregardock Cliffs, owned by the National Trust. The place is both wild and beautiful and filled with a raw, elemental energy. Looking out from the cliffs, at times the land and sea merge into one mass that feels as though it might literally swallow you up.
On the beach, huge monolithic struts of rock create an alien, almost primordial landscape. Living and working on the coast through the Winter, and into Spring, has allowed Tim both a high degree of experimentation, as well as ‘immersal’ in his subject. From the outset Steward has felt an intuitive desire to kneel in the mud, to feel the Earth beneath him, and to make work. Drawing at Tregardock over the winter months demands quite a vigorous approach.The descent and ascent with art materials in hand can be a challenge, particularly in such an exposed environment.
As Daphne du Maurier says in her book - Vanishing Cornwall, “the difference in temperature, the vagary of weather, varies from mile to mile with a kind of lunatic perversity”. Over time though Tim has learnt to embrace this precarious process of working, and control has to be relinquished and a certain amount of improvisation is necessitated.
Applying medium with his hands, and carving up shapes with strong and visceral
mark-making feels hugely satisfying in an environment like Tregardock. Working outside has meant that many of Steward's studies start as simply marks on a page, impressions or moments captured. He tries to record these moments when he sees them. Sometimes when he doesn't make it down to the beach, he finds himself entangled in the hedgerows, studying the plants, or trying to capture the colour of the sky. These moments are recorded, no matter how roughly and nearly always become something, and over time they form the marrow of his work.
Steward says "there is something very humbling about being alone in a vast landscape, and in truth everything in me can pull away from Tregardock when the weather is stormy, such is the intensity of the place. Still though I know I must go with my instincts from the start, to feel the earth beneath me and the elements around me”.
“As I emerge out the other side of these last few years, Tregardock has become a
wonderful place of solace, despite its fierceness at times".
