Western Morning News (Saturday)
Making waves in the art world
FRANK RUHRMUND admires the masterful paintings of celebrated artist Neil Pinkett
Looking at Neil Pinkett’s latest collection of oil paintings Water, in Cornwall Contemporary, Penzance, which can now be seen online via the gallery’s website, together with a 3D virtual exhibition tour which enables one to not only see the paintings in position on the gallery wall but to measure the dimension of each them, it was no surprise to note that despite all the difficulties caused by Covid-19 restrictions several had already been sold.
While thinking of the many artists and their association with water from JMW Turner’s The Shipwreck to Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa, better known perhaps as The Great Wave, these paintings also bring to mind “the land of faery” of the poet W.B. Yeats. A place wherein nobody gets old and godly and grave, old and crafted and wise, or old and bitter of tongue. If he were with us now he would probably add and where there was no Covid, but where he longs to right the wrongs of unshapely things, and re-build them “with the earth and the sky and the water re-made, like a casket of gold.”
From such oils on board and canvas as Treen, Sand and Cliff and Relentless Waves, West Cornwall to Cloud Reflection, Sennen and Approaching Rain, Neil Pinkett, as it were, strikes gold with each of the thirty or so pictures in this exhibition. No stranger to the treasures to be found in the Penwith landscape, born and bred in St Just-in-Penwith, he took the first steps toward what was to become a highly successful artistic career as a student of graphic design at Cornwall College.
He later worked for several successful years as a designer in Bristol until, and almost inevitably, the call of the sea and the cry of “Surf’s up!”, brought him back to his native Cornwall.
As Sarah Brittain-Mansbridge, director of Cornwall Contemporary reminds us: “In 1996 he moved into the fine art arena with an acclaimed successful debut solo exhibition, and since then has become one of the foremost landscape painters in this country.
“His work has been exhibited at a large number of galleries throughout the UK, not forgetting
the Gordon Ramsay restaurant, London, while a collection of his paintings has also toured in venues across the U.S.A. In these latest works he has turned his focus to the element that has always been at the forefront of his artistic career – water.
“In recent years he has divided his time between his native
Cornwall, working from cliff edges and using a fishing hut as a studio at Cape Cornwall, and to his boat moored in Bath, where the gentle flow of canal water has provided an alternative perspective to the forceful, ever changing sea tides he has often captured in his paintings.”
Ever adventurous, many will
recall the journey he made by canoe, a few years ago, painting as he paddled with an easel lashed across the bow of his canoe, down the River Shannon in Ireland.
In his recent adventures he has studied water in all its guises, from surging Cornish tides, to streams wending their way through valleys and woods, from reflective canals
and rivers to rock pools and bustling harbours. His handling of his subject matter is masterly.
To view his paintings online click on www.cornwallcontemporary.com until April 12, when Cornwall Contemporary, 1 Parade Street, Penzance, will be open 10-5, Monday-Saturday, until May 1.