22nd June 2010 Cambridge Art Fair this week

The Cambridge Art Fair is upon us (24th-27th June). Tomorrow the final paintings are arriving from Cornwall and on Thursday we will be hanging the stand in preparation for the Private View on Thursday night. We'll be showing recent work by Ben Catt, Neil Davies, Brenda King, Jason Lilley, Gary Long, Neil Pinkett, John Piper, Michael Praed and Terry Whybrow. I'll put examples of the work on the website early next week but if you want to see them in the flesh you'll have to pay us a visit, either in Spitalfields after the exhibition or at the Cambridge Art Fair itself. More details of the fair can be found here.

We still have a couple of free and discounted tickets available. Please contact us for details. We hope to see you there.

15th June 2010 Neil Davies

In the run up to our exhibition last month I didn't get a chance to write about Neil Davies who has recently agreed to exhibit with us and whose paintings were among the most popular in the Mayfair show. To say that Neil applies paint liberally is something of an understatement. Layer upon layer of paint coat his smaller works on board but the overall effect is carefully controlled. The result are paintings that convey wild Cornish weather and dramatic landscapes like no other artist's. A trip to his studio is a fasciniating experience - saucepans of paint litter the floor while the back wall features the silhouette of a canvas in the middle of splatters of brightly coloured paint.

We are delighted to be able to show his paintings and are very much looking forward to seeing the new work he is preparing for our trip to the Cambridge Art Fair.

23rd May 2010 Cambridge Art Fair line-up

The Cambridge Art Fair is now only a month away (24th-27th June). This annual event is held in the Chilford Hall Vineyard in Linton, a few miles south of Cambridge. There will be 42 stands exhibiting work from around Europe and even from the Americas. We'll be on stand B9 showing new paintings by Ben Catt, Neil Davies, Brenda King, Jason Lilley, Gary Long, Neil Pinkett, John Piper, Michael Praed and Terry Whybrow. More details of the fair can be found here.

We'll have a limited number of free and discounted tickets available nearer the time as well as some invitations to the Private View on the evening of the 24th June. Please contact us for details. We hope to see you there.

3rd May 2010 Mayfair exhibition opens!

Today our Mayfiar exhibition has opened. The show runs from 3rd-9th May at 54 The Gallery, Shepherd Market and features paintings by nine artists from Cornwall. Please see our events page for full details. After a bubble-wrap filled morning I'm very pleased with the way the paintings look - although there's a large range of painting styles they work well as a group together. Neil Davies' Turner-esque Headland provides a dramatic backdrop on the rear wall of the gallery while the more controlled styles of Terry Whybrow and Jason Lilley sit well with Ben Catt's more abstract approach. Some of the paintings on show can be viewed here.

There's a Private View on Wednesday and it would be great to see you there. Alternatively we'll be open until at least 6.30pm every day this week. Here are a few photos from the show:

26th April 2010 Reading Contemporary Art Fair.

This weekend we've been showing work by 6 artists at the Reading Contemporary Art Fair. This was the first year for this event but the turnout was high with 70 exhibitors and over 3000 people attending the fair over the weekend. It was a fun event and we learned a lot about Reading in the process, including that one of the main tourist attractions of the city is a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry and that The Oracle (signposted all over the M4) is nothing more exotic than a large shopping centre! On our stand we showed work by Brenda King, John Piper, Michael Praed, Ken Symonds, Ges Wilson and Vincent Wilson. We included some of Ges' recent landscapes which went down well with the Reading set:

Our next art fair is the Cambridge Art Fair (25th-27th June). If you are thinking of attending please contact us as we will have a limited number of discounted tickets available nearer the time.

6th April 2010 Exhibition line-up finalised.

We now have the line-up for our exhibition in Mayfair in May (3rd-9th). West Cornwall Perspectives will feature recent work by nine artists all of whom live in West Cornwall:

Of these nine, only John Piper and Michael Praed exhibited with us at our last exhibition in November 2009 - we are very pleased to be able to show the new artists' work for the first time. Their work covers a broad spectrum of painting styles, from Terry Whybrow's still-lifes to Ben Catt's fairly abstract landscapes, from Brenda King's faux-naive table tops and views to Jason Lilley's politically inspires skylines of St Ives.

Full details of the exhibition including some of the paintings we shall be showing can be found here. Brochures (which are also an invitation to our Private View on the 5th May) will be sent out to people on our mailing list in the next couple of weeks. If you are not on our mailing list and would like to receive a brochure, please sign up here. We hope to see many of you in May.

3rd April 2010 New artist: Ben Catt

We are delighted that Ben Catt has agreed to show his paintings with us beginning at our May exhibition in Mayfair. Ben was born in London and studied sculpture in Newcastle but has now lived in Cornwall for several years and his paintings have been exhibited at several galleries across the West Country. As the suspension of my car will testify, Ben lives deep in the Cornish countryside and his paintings are inspired by the coastline, landscape and prevailing weather conditions around his home.

Recent Ben has been bust preparing for a one-man show at a gallery in St Ives. However, he has also found time to paint for our forthcoming exhibition. This work, fresh off the easel, expresses the calmness, isolation and at ties bleakness of the Cornish winter.

29th March 2010 New artist: Jason Lilley

We are very pleased to announce that Jason Lilley has agreed to exhibit his paintings with us at future events. Jason studied art at Falmouth and Newcastle before settling in Truro. His paintings, which have been shown widely throughout the West Country and further afield, have featured on the ITV programme "Elements" as well as the Channel 4 production "Watercolour Challenge". Increasingly he now uses oils and his paintings of the buildings, roofs and skylines typical of St Ives, are frequently a comment on some of the politics of the tourism trade in Cornwall.

For our May exhibition Jason has painted images that are very characteristic of his more recent work. The full range will be avaiable on this website nearer the time but for the moment here is a personal favourite:

Sunday's Sun, Jason Lilley
Oil on board, 18in x 18in, £895

24th March 2010 Neil Pinkett

We are delighted to be able to add Neil Pinkett to the list of artists whose work we shall be showing in our exhibition in Mayfair in the first week of May. Neil grew up in St Just and although he now spends part of the year in Bath, he still spends a large portion of his time painting from his studio in Marazion overlooking St Michael's Mount. After a career as an illustrator and an art lecturer Neil has become one of Cornwall's foremost landscape painters and we are very much looking forward to exhibiting his work.

Neil travels widely and paints landscapes across the UK. Recently he has been working on a series of paintings of the Scillonian, the boat that connects Penzance to the Scilly Isles, as well as a series of famous bridges across Britain. For our May exhibition Neil has painted several landscapes of West Penwith, all of which beautifully convey the mood and atmosphere of the region. Below are a couple of examples of these paintings. More can be found here.

16th March 2010 Gary Long

We are very pleased to announce that we shall be exhibiting work by Gary Long at both our May exhibition in Mayfair and at the Cambridge Art Fair. Born in Birmingham, Gary studied art in Manchester before working as an illustrator in both publishing and advertising. More recently he has moved to Devon and then to St Ives. He now lectures part-time at the University College, Falmouth.

Gary's paintings accurately capture the dramatic weather and the energy of the coastline of West Cornwall. For our May exhibition he has, among others, painted two fantastic triptychs of waves at local coves.

More details of Gary and other examples of his paintings can be found here.

10th March 2010 Terry Whybrow

We are delighted that Terry Whybrow has agreed to take part in our group exhibition in London in May. Terry was born in St Pancras but has lived in St Ives for 30 years. A furniture designer by trade he has concentrated full-time on paintings since moving to Cornwall. In a reversal of the trend of many artists, Terry's work has become less abstract over time. His early work in Cornwall was heavily influenced by the abstract movement associated with St Ives in the mid-twentieth century. He talks of incessantly painting circles that evolved over time into spheres and later developed into the pots and apples that characterise the still-lifes for which he is best known.

To me his paintings are serene, beautifully composed and extremely stylish. We are very much looking forward to showing them. More details of the May exhibition can be found on our events page. A biography of Terry and more of his paintings will appear on our artists page soon. For the moment here are a couple of the paintings Terry has given us to exhibit:

8th March 2010 Reading Contemporary Art Fair: line-up.

We are very pleased to announce the list of artists whose work we shall be exhibiting at this year's Reading Contemporary Art Fair. The event takes place between the 23rd and 25th of April, 2010 at the Rivermead Leisure Centre, RG1 8EQ. There's a Private View on the Friday evening and general viewing over the weekend. Nearer the time we'll have a limited number of tickets available, both to the Private View and the event itself. Please contact us for details. Alternatively tickets can be bought at the time on the door. More details on our events page. We hope to see some of you there!

The artists we'll be exhibiting are: Brenda King, John Piper, Michael Praed, Ken Symonds, Ges Wilson and Vincent Wilson. Ges' work will include some of her landscapes as well as her figurative work. Ken is sending us some of his watercolours of Penwith which are a personal favourite. And there will be a chance to see the fruits of Michael Praed's intensive winter of painting with some of his most recent work. Here's a very small sample:

28th February 2010 New artist: Brenda King

We are delighted that Brenda King has decided to exhibit with us. Brenda, originally from Cumbria, has been living in Cornwall for over 30 years. After studying at the Lancaster College of Art and the Royal College of Art she worked as a textile designer for Liberty's before embarking on a career painting full time. Her paintings are well known in Cornwall and have been exhibited as far afield as Tokyo and the USA.

Brenda paints in the faux-naive style that has been closely associated with West Cornwall, and St Ives in particular. Her paintings are always vibrant, and beautifully composed. We will have several images of her work and a full biography on this website soon and will be showing her paintings at the Reading Comteporary Art Fair and at our May exhibition. In the meantime here's a sneak preview:

December Colour
Oil on board, 12in x 12in, £750

Table Top With Two Blue Chairs
Oil on board, 8in x 8in, £550

21st February 2010 Michael Praed paints Mullion

We've just spent a week in Cornwall making preparations for the exhibition we have planned in Mayfair in May. More details about that will follow, including some new names to our group of artists. While there I also called in on Michael Praed to see some of his most recent paintings. Michael has been painting predigiously, almost obsessively over the winter and has a great range of new paintings. As ever, his compositions capture the essence of the Cornish winter landscape while retaining unmistakeably his much recognised style.

During this period of great activity Michael produced a set of five paintings of Mullion which we are delighted to be able to show you here and which will form part of our exhibition in May. They represent five different views of Mullion harbour and island, in a range of weathers and lights:

More details of these and other Michael Praed paintings can be found here.

20th January 2010 Cambridge Art Fair announced!

ELEVEN AND A HALF will also be showing paintings at this year's Cambridge Art Fair. This event, now in its fourth year, is held in the Chilford Hall Vineyard and Conference Centre and is a popular event with both exhibitors and attendees. We will be found at stand B9 of the fair which is taking place between the 24th and 27th June 2010. We'll announce which artists' work we'll be showing nearer the time - please keep an eye on our events page for details.

If you're planning on visiting and need tickets, please contact us for details.

In the meantime, here are a couple of images of new paintings by John Piper, some of the first new paintings we've received this year. Further details on the recent additions page.

Cove
Oil on board, 6in x 16in, £500

Cottages at Sennen
Oil on board, 6in x 14in, £460

18th January 2010 Reading Contemporary Art Fair announced!

We are very pleased to have been accepted to hold a stand at the first Reading Contemporary Art Fair. This event, organised by the same people who have been running the successful Windsor Contemporary Art Fair for several years, takes place between the 23rd and 25th of April, 2010. There's a Private View on the Friday evening and general viewing over the weekend. We'll be taking the work of several of our artists along (exact line-up still to be finalised) and it would be great to see you there.

Nearer the time we'll have a limited number of tickets available, both to the Private View and the event itself. Please contact us for details. Alternatively tickets can be bought at the time on the door. More details on our events page.