Western Morning News (Saturday)
The unstudied natural world in between everything else
Frank Ruhrmund sees the work of two artists at the Cornwall Contemporary in Penzance
When I first saw Melanie Geomans’ paintings I recall how they made me think of lines from Thomas Hardy, “Every branch big with it, Bent every twig with it, Every fork like a white web-foot, Every street and pavement mute.” It is now not surprising to learn that many of the titles of the paintings in her exhibition Long I Stood, at Cornwall Contemporary, are quotations from poems by such as Hardy and Robert Frost.
An artist who grew up in the Lincolnshire fens, she spent time in Italy prior to studying Florentine Renaissance Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art and then at Cheltenham School of Art where she gained her MA. Following a series of residencies and teaching posts, she re-located from the capital to Cambridgeshire where she now works in her studio in central Ely. She has exhibited widely throughout the UK, her work can now be found in collections in this country and overseas, and she has been selected for the National Open Art Competition, the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition and Stage 2 of the John Moores Painting Prize 2020. There is a simplicity about her paintings which is utterly beguiling, but then, as she says: “I used to think that art had to be complex to be good, but over time I’ve realised that keeping things simple or paring them down can make a bigger statement.” Each of the paintings she is showing here, as she tells us “began with a walk: an object found, a photograph taken, a thought that occurred. I’m
drawn to the incidental things we might rush past and not notice – the unstudied natural world in between everything else. My paintings draw attention to these overlooked forms, using traditional materials to mark their significance. I’m intrigued by complicated patterns of line. Drawing loose lines with a fine brush feels almost like stitching or weaving. This work is from the heart, the things I see that I love.” From her title painting Long I Stood, oil, acrylic and 22ct goldleaf on canvas, to a diptych When the Robin’s Nest (Quando fa la nidiata il pettirosso) oil, 22ct gold leaf & gesso on canvas, viewers will surely love all that they see here.
They will surely also love all that they see here from the brush of David Mankin, whose exhibition Thresholds is running in tandem with that of Melanie Geomans. An artist who has been described as one of Cornwall’s most exciting emerging abstract expressionist painters, as Sarah Brittain-Mansbridge, Director of
Cornwall Contemporary, says, “His paintings possess a powerful and compelling integrity. Words can’t convey their subtleties, they need to be seen in the flesh. One needs to stand in front of his paintings to taste the salt spray, smell the wild gorse on the cliff edge, and feel the Atlantic winds blasting the granite headlands.”
To further quote from an essay by arts writer Kate Reeve-Edwards: “The artist himself is an elemental force, filling up every available space within his work like water, refusing to crawl back from any boundary but hitting it with his full force until it breaks apart, picking up the pieces and rearranging them on a canvas so we can step
inside his world and feel the wind take our breath away.” From Echoing Breakers Swell to The Threshold Sea, his paintings are as exciting as they are elemental. Not to be missed, admission is free, and they can be seen, with those by Melanie Geomans, in Cornwall Contemporary, 1 Parade Street, Penzance, until October 3.