Sam is an abstract relief artist whose work explores surface, texture, and colour through distinctive grid-based paintings. After studying Graphic Design in Manchester, he began a career in Art & Design education, including teaching art at St Ives School. He is a member of the St Ives Society of Artists and the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts.
Drawing inspiration from both urban environments and the vibrant beach scenes of St Ives, Sam’s work reflects experiences shaped by time spent in the city and by the sea. His abstract relief paintings combine bold geometric forms with layered media to create richly textured surfaces. Colour plays a central role within these compositions, bringing depth, rhythm, and energy to each piece.
While rooted in the language of hard-edge abstraction, Sam’s practice retains the tactile quality of painting through visible brushstrokes and layered surfaces. Each individual square within his compositions carries its own narrative, yet together they form a visual record of his experiences, influences, and evolving artistic journey.
‘I am endlessly fascinated by those things unseen in our landscape which are nevertheless ‘felt’ and by the duality of the historical geology of a landscape, for example a high moor having once been beneath a sea. The secret life of the wild animals that live amongst us and the way that man has shaped the land through his tracks, farming and industry also play their part in my work. Each painting captures a moment in time, the land and the sea are never still, the currents continue to run beneath the stillest waters, and deep deep below the most tranquil landscape water runs through the centuries to the sea.’
Adrienne Peverall is a Cornwall-based artist and printmaker whose work is inspired by her love of nature and the animals roaming freely on the moorland where she lives.
Since the early 1990s Adrienne has produced many monoprints etchings and paintings; the almost abstract monoprints portray rich intuitive colour relationships whilst the etchings contain combinations of strong draughtmanship and tonal contrasts. There is also nearly always an element of humour present in her wildlife observations.
The Porthmeor Print Workshop across the road from the Mariners Gallery became a regular working studio for Adrienne and many other artist-printmakers, some of whom exhibit at the Mariners Gallery and Penwith Gallery.
This long association with the art scene in St Ives coincides with Adrienne’s membership of the St Ives Society, as a member of the committee and as a Director and Hon. Secretary.
‘I am deeply moved by Impressionism, fascinated by movement, brush marks and how colours dance when placed next to each other on canvas. Anything is possible on the canvas, and that is why I paint. When we delve deep into the notion and romance of gardens, we can find it all’
I live and work in St Ives, Cornwall, UK and am a long-time member of Art Space Gallery Co-op, on the Wharf; St Ives Society of Artists, St Ives Arts Club and an associate member of Penwith Society of Arts.
With ‘home as a studio’ lit by a north and west facing window, my working method is that of a building up of transparent and opaque layers. Paintings are inspired by a particular place/weather condition or start with one colour on a blank canvas.
The beaches of St Ives at low tide, St Ives Bay and the north Cornish coast are an endless, inexhaustible source of creativity.
“West Penwith is a magical land surrounded by ever-changing seas; walking every day across ancient landscapes, trackways and footpaths is the inspiration for my work. I use different materials, some found and some recycled, and various mediums including collage.”
Howard Milton tells the tale of his first life drawing lesson at Hammersmith College of Art, under the influential eye of Ruskin Spear. Spotting Milton shyly peering at the model from the back of room, he led him gently to the front, whispering “you can’t draw what you can’t see”. Those first lessons taught him to find the tone, focus and geometry of whatever was in front of him.
‘Although my early development in art was essentially one of design, for as long as I can remember painting and drawing was an activity in which I felt more interested. A fascination with the history of painters and their work began at adolescence, and the opportunity to produce work was encouraged at my first Art College through the discipline of life classes and my own expeditions in outdoor sketching and painting.
St. Ives became very important in this aspect; I first visited in 1963 when I drew images of Porthmeor and the harbour. I revisited St. Ives throughout the subsequent years, and now reside in the town.
My art work is still somehow connected to the idea of landscape, although a strong impulse towards the plasticity and aesthetic quality of oil paint can dominate in the actual process, producing a more emotionally charged result. Essentially abstract, my paintings record experiences of how texture and balance, depth of field, and colour have become the prime motive in my work.’
Colour and process are the two fundamental aspects of Heather’s work, colour is intuitive and celebratory, starting with a saturated coloured ground, this creates an atmosphere and through the use of layers and a constant reworking of the painted surface, a personal vocabulary of marks develop, using brushes, print rollers, squeegees, any tool that enables her to create and reveal atmospheric layers, a lyrical and fluid atmosphere develops evoking an emotional response in the viewer and memories of seascape/landscape.
Wild swimming has given her a new perspective and access to the sea year round, having immersed herself in the unique colours of the St Ives beaches she then immerses herself in the painting process back in her studio, she likes to work on many canvases at the same time using acrylic paint offers her the freedom of building up layers quickly and capturing a sense of energy and movement of the sea. Painterly lines and marks serve as metaphors of energy, movement and growth, exploring the relationship between colour and the vitality of the natural world.
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‘I’m passionate about exploring and documenting our fast changing world.‘