One of this summer’s unmissable art exhibitions takes place, not in a gallery, but in a gloriously comfortable inn by the sea. The Old Coastguard, Mousehole, is the perfect setting for Colourful Sails, Ripples of Light, a solo show by Vicki Norman from which a percentage of profits will go towards the restoration and care of traditional red-sailed luggers, which make for such an evocative sight on the Cornish coast.
Vicki has worked as a professional artist for 25 years; her works have been exhibited with the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in London and have won major awards in Europe and the US. Since moving to Cornwall from Shropshire, she has been painstakingly restoring an old net loft behind Gwavas House in Newlyn, reclaiming it as an artist’s studio and teaching space for those who come to learn traditional painting techniques.
The studio itself has a long history within the Newlyn art colony. From around the 1880s the fishing port began to attract artists who lived amongst the coastal community they painted, renting cheap rooms including net lofts. Gwavas House, whose maritime inhabitants would have hauled their boats and catch up the shore from Sandy Cove just below, was one such space and Thomas Cooper Gotch, Walter Langley and Stanhope Forbes all stayed and worked there at various times.
It’s the perfect location for Vicki to indulge her other passion, sailing. It’s something she has a natural affinity for – some of her happiest memories are of sailing with her dad when she was a little girl.
‘Being at sea is wonderful creative fuel for a painter like me,’ she explains. ‘For a start you get an entirely different view of the coastline, and you feel so much closer to the raw elements. When I’m sailing, I’m physically in the kind of liminal spaces I’m trying to represent on the canvas, where land meets sea, and sea meets sky.’
Pursuing this passion is something that Vicki now does as artist in residence for the Cornish Maritime Trust – a charity which helps preserve Cornwall’s maritime heritage by maintaining and sailing historic working vessels. This includes the iconic red-sailed lugger Barnabas which, built in 1881, is the oldest mackerel driver still sailing today. By painting the vessels, and indeed painting from the vessels while out on the water, Vicki is helping raise awareness of these unique survivors of our maritime past.
Maintenance of these heritage vessels is an enormous undertaking and something all the trust’s volunteers work incredibly hard on, preserving endangered skills and passing them on to the next generation. In learning these skills, Vicki has become familiar with the ‘anatomy’ of traditional luggers, which in turn informs her work.
Since devoting herself to traditional painting techniques at art school, Vicki has fine-tuned her signature timeless, painterly style. Central to this is an incredibly precise approach to composition and colour theory, combined with impressionist influences.
‘The 1880s-1910s is the era of painting that really moves me,’ explains Vicki. Using historic pigments and painting en plein air, she is working with the same principles as the Newlyn School artists and their contemporaries across Europe.
As she puts it: ‘Working on location quickly to capture the essence of a time and place encourages a looser, more impressionist style of painting which focuses on atmosphere above detail. Restricting the use of pigments to specific parts of the colour wheel gives a softness and historic quality to the work, but it also amplifies the light and mood of each painting – it’s that feeling of things clicking into place. This balance and quietude is my painterly voice, it’s how I see the world.’
This summer’s show at The Old Coastguard Inn, Mousehole, has been skilfully curated by Penzance-based artist curator, Gillian Cooper. Colourful Sails, Ripples of Light features majestic traditional sail boats and timeless coastal scenes and will be perfectly at home on the walls of this colourful and comfortable inn by the sea, where the sight of red sails passing by is cherished.
Charles Inkin, co-owner of The Old Coastguard, says: ‘Vicki’s mesmeric work is the ideal subject for a summer exhibition here in Mousehole. Whenever the red sails of Barnabas are seen from the terrace or garden, there’s a tiny collective pause. It’s like the past sailing reassuringly into view for a moment.
‘We’re very glad to be able to support the Cornish Maritime Trust, and I’m looking forward to seeing Vicki’s work in situ.’
Colourful Sails, Ripples of Light is showing until July 6, with Vicki attending The Old Coastguard for a ‘Meet The Artist’ event on July 2.
oldcoastguardhotel.co.uk
