A New Beginning in Cornwall

As this glorious spell of summer weather continued I headed across the border to Cornwall for a creative workshop, with my usual feeling of trepidation, but this time with added doubts as it was an art workshop! Back in the dark depths of winter I had signed up to a beginner's painting course, part of my New Year plans to try out new possibilities. But now the time had arrived I was really having second thoughts! But as Sylvia Plath says, the worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

The course is at Newlyn School of Art which offers a wide range of art courses tutored by over thirty of Cornwall's most respected artists. Newlyn has been the centre of an artists' colony since the 1880s. I arrived the evening before and set out to explore the town. I have a new camera phone to play with and was eager to test it out.

The walk down to the harbour was through a maze of narrow streets, lots of colourful windows, doors and flowers:

The harbour was much bigger than I anticipated, and when I spotted the lifeboats I was able to play 'where in the UK am I' with my son, who is an RNLI volunteer on the lifeboats in Poole. He soon guessed as it is the famous Penlee lifeboat station:

Time for an evening swim, before a stroll along the beach. The water was warm and calm - and extremely shallow, so it was more of a dunk than a swim. I could just make out St Michaels Mount in the haze.

The tide was well out, leaving a sandy strip full of delightful patterns. I wondered how the new phone camera would cope with the differing light and dark:

I found lots of 'trees' to fit in with the woodland theme of the year!

I began to appreciate the quality of the light in this part of Cornwall, and the variety of potential scenes to paint.

I woke early on the solstice day, almost caught the sunrise.... but soon it was raining and then the thunder and lightning.....so different from the serenity of the evening before:

I headed to the school, housed in an old Victorian School building, so reminiscent of the one that I attended as a child! Wooden floors, high ceilings and paned windows with light flooding in - I felt at home in this space.

The tutor, Marie-Claire Hamon, welcomed us, and was so gentle and reassuring. Some of my nerves eased. We spent the morning making marks on a large piece of paper as a group, and it was so freeing! Seeing the different thickness of the lines, how the colours changed when they met each other, and having no worries about it being 'right' or 'wrong':

Our next task was to play around with colour-mixing, thinking about the differences between the warm and cool colours and their complementary colours:

After a sociable lunch, Marie-Claire asked us to draw a chair - a simple instruction some might say, but for me a real challenge! The size of the paper, using an easel, using charcoal, all new experiences. And I felt quite alone after the collaborative and experimental approach of the morning. But I gave it a go. It is not something I have done before, and as you can tell I really struggled with perspective:

What surprised me was how absorbing I found the process of drawing. Here I started with the paper covered in charcoal and rubbed out what was 'not chair' which really helped with getting the proportions right:

If anyone had said at the start of the day that by the end I would be able to produce such a drawing, I would have laughed! And yet, here it is! It shows the value of a skilled teacher. Marie-Claire provided simple guidance, valued my experiments, intervened to show me how to amend my mistakes, and was generous with her expertise. By the end of the afternoon I had drawn a chair that I was really pleased with!

After such an intense day, I was ready for a change of scene and eager to be outside. I took advantage of the sunny weather to drive a little way along the coast to Porthcurno, a beautiful white-sanded beach, surrounded by granite cliffs. And yes, the water was every shade from the deepest blue to turquoise. I eagerly headed into the water - and it took my breath away it was decidedly chillier than the day before!

I wanted to capture this moment, but the beach was really busy. I found that with one of the editing tools of the new camera I could remove people from my image........I was not alone on this beach, but it can be made to appear so. It reminded me that there is no one truth, just many different perspectives. Just as my drawings were one way of representing my perspective of that chair at that moment in time.

I returned to Newlyn and wandered around the harbour. I looked for reflections, thinking about my day and the changes that I had experienced, firstly in my skills at mark-making and secondly in my beliefs and perceptions about myself:

As I looked through my photos on my phone late in the evening, I remembered the app Pixlar that can create multiple exposures:

I also thought about the conversations between the course participants. It is clear that we all value being creative in different ways, for its positive impact on our lives. And yet, it is often marginalised in our education system. As Edward De Bono noted:

"There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would forever be repeating the same patterns."

#newlynschoolofart; #paintingforbeginners; #creativity; #experimentation; #cornwall; #newlyn; #summersun; #seaswimming