Horizon gazing
- Lucy Studley
- Apr 7
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 11
Two artists whose work complements each other sublimely are showing together at The Old Coastguard in Mousehole this spring. Words By Lucy Studley
The Old Coastguard is a seaside hotel in Mousehole looking out over a spectacular stretch of coastline in the far west of Cornwall. Here, sub-tropical gardens slope down to the harbour wall, where a subtle glass balustrade – punctuated by Tom Leaper’s sculpture, Sun & Sail – is all that separates you from the glistening waters of Mounts Bay. The hotel’s garden room opens out onto a terrace which shares this coastal vista of ever-shifting colours, light, and weather, reaching to the horizon.
It’s a horizon which has seen everything from Spanish raiding parties and shipwrecks, to storms and Scillies-bound steamships. Gig rowers, dolphins and the famous red-sailed luggers are amongst the most popular sights with visitors these days, but for the generations of artists inspired by the ephemeral light of the Cornish coast, the horizon itself needs little embellishment – it’s a protagonist in its own right.
Over the past few years, the hotel has forged a reputation for exhibitions of work by contemporary artists working in Cornwall, or with strong connections to the place where the land meets the sea. All under the supervision of The Old Coastguard’s Curator, Gillian Cooper.
An artist herself, Gillian uses her connections with fellow creatives, local galleries and research trips to artists’ studios across the region to seek out art which complements the space she oversees perfectly. Art has a permanent home here, and owners Charles and Edmund Inkin see it as an integral part of the soul-nourishing atmosphere provided at The Old Coastguard and its sister inn across Penwith Moor, The Gurnard’s Head. The annual spring and summer show is a highlight of the calendar for art-loving locals and visitors alike.
This year, Gillian has chosen two artists whose horizon-scanning artistic impulses unite them around a very appropriate theme for the setting. Painter, Laura Terry, and ceramicist, Ceri Shaw, first met when Ceri visited Laura’s stunningly situated studio near Trebarwith during Open Studios and have kept in touch ever since, recognising shared themes in each other’s work despite their different mediums.
Laura’s atmospheric landscape paintings seek to capture shifting light and those fleeting moments ‘at the edges’ – the blurred boundaries of night and day, sea and land, shadow and light – when the atmosphere subtly shifts. In her oil paintings, the horizon becomes the stage for a symphony of different notes which overlay and entwine, achieving a finely balanced harmony.
Like many of her fellow landscape artists, Laura undertakes small preparatory sketches and watercolours on her walks along the Cornish coast. North Cornwall, around her home in Trebarwith, is a favourite subject of course, but she also likes to travel to other parts of Cornwall to gain inspiration, including Bodmin Moor, Lamorna and St Ives. “In every place the light is so different,” she explains, “you could almost be in a different country from one cove or headland to the next.”
It’s clear to see from Laura’s canvasses that skies – and clouds specifically – are her passion. “Inspired by Constable’s work, I spent a year painting clouds during my Fine Art degree,” she explains. “That experience really underpins my work and now, here in my studio I get to watch the clouds constantly changing over the sea as I work.” The influence of painters like Constable and Turner is clear to see in Laura’s work, and her visual immersion in the constantly shifting light and weather of the coast infuses itself into every wispy cloud or reflection of light on the sea.
TOP: Catching The Light, oil on canvas, 50x50cm
INSET LEFT: Ebb and Flow, Cornwall, oil on board, 30x30cm
INSET RIGHT: Calming Light, Cornwall, oil on canvas 76.2x76.2cm
ABOVE: Late Summer Low Tide oil on canvas 100cmx100cm
Meanwhile, ceramicist Ceri has an equal fascination with landscape and the dividing lines within our natural surroundings. Although Ceri lives in Bath she spends plenty of time in Cornwall, specifically in the area around Laura’s home and studio, which is a particularly dramatic and rugged stretch of coastline. Like Laura, Ceri also paints, sketches and takes photographs, to use as source materials when creating new work, conceiving each vessel as an abstracted expression of the forms she perceives in the landscape.
Her fine bone china vessels are slip cast in plaster moulds using a liquid clay. These simple and delicate cylinders are then hand-altered when they come out of the mould. Incised lines are created using a process called water erosion, where a masking fluid protects an area of the clay surface while another area is wiped away, effectively peeling back the layers in a process which mirrors natural erosion.
Sometimes this is a very deliberate form of mark making, but elsewhere it’s open to chance and responds to the behaviour of the material itself. “Fine bone china has a kind of muscle memory, so sometimes you remove it from the mould and there are already imperfections. I can work with these, using them as openings to explore ideas. Sometimes with my water erosion method I can go entirely through the vessel, but people seem to like these pieces as it introduces an element of the unexpected.”
When lit from within, Ceri’s delicate pieces glow beautifully, the eroded lines illuminated and suggestive of the rise and fall of the landscape on the horizon. They also recall the passing of geological time as evidenced by layers of rock or the shape of a watercourse and the patterns and textures formed by natural forces in the landscape over millennia. Other vessels in Ceri’s current body of work are graced with painterly brushes of colour inspired by forms in the landscape, or incorporate sand to create an additional layer of texture.
“When I spend time in Cornwall for research or to stock up on inspiration, I’m always trying to see the contrast in things,” says Ceri. “That could be a line in the sand made by the prevailing wind, the horizon line, or a river cutting through the rocks. The dividing lines or edges of natural forms and phenomena interest me aesthetically but also for the unpredictability they bring, the possibilities they suggest, and the awareness they create of how small and insignificant we are in the context of this rugged, dramatic landscape.”
TOP RIGHT: Landscapes captured
Horizon is showing at The Old Coastguard between 27th April and 29th June and a ‘Meet the Artists’ event takes place on 10th May, to which all are welcome.
ABOVE: Fine bone china vessels