FROM THE STUDIO NO.18 (24th Jul 2022)

From 24th July 2022 newsletter.

I seem to have skipped a month…or two…hmmm so what’s been happening?

Well, I’ve been to the Do Lectures and have taken a while to land. If you don’t know about it check out their website, it’s a festival of ideas to put it lightly. All of the talks are online.

It’s also been fantastic weather here, it’s the school holidays, so beach camps and lighting the dye-bath fire. I’ve had a little help from some cinnabar moths to harvest dye plants and hang up the dyed fabric.

I realised today that I have a few exhibition openings to tell you about, it’s a weekend of events actually. You are most welcome to attend any of the events and please do come and say hi if you do.

I entered the Beep Painting Prize, an open submission juried exhibition. Launched in 2012, BEEP (biennial exhibition of painting) is a contemporary international painting prize based in Swansea, Wales. So, nice and local. I’m really excited to get into this.

Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time was selected for the exhibition, which opens on Friday 29th July at 7pm. The Elysium Gallery bar will merge into the after party as usual.

Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time 2022

Botanical colour on gesso on birch ply panel, 122x122cm

The Beep Painting Prize is the first exhibition opening of the Beep Painting Biennial where there will be many exhibitions Swansea wide. Saturday 30th July 7pm opens the touring exhibition Walking In Two Worlds, in which I have several pieces. This exhibition takes place at the large Volcano Theatre Gallery. (This posters date starts in June, I can only assume that it was delayed for some reason).

The third exhibition opening this weekend is the Salon De Refuse at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. It coincides with the National Eisteddfod which is a celebration of the culture and language in Wales and alternates between North and South Wales every year. I entered a large painting and photograph diptych into the National Eisteddfod and was ‘refused’ and have been accepted into the Salon De Refuses.

In case you don’t know, the Salon De Refuses is generally known as an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon. Famously Manet, Pissaro, Courbet, Whistler and many impressionists were rejected in the Salon of 1863, but the critical attention ultimately legitimized the emerging avant-garde in painting.

This opens at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Sunday evening, July 31st at 5pm in Oriel 2.

I’ll be at Beep and Walking In Two Worlds. Hope to see you there!

Studio journal 4

I've got a little box of watercolour tubes that I've had sitting around for a few years. My father-in-law gave them to me, his father was a painter. I, or perhaps they, have been waiting for the right time.

I've found it difficult to get motivation moving these last two weeks. It is far from a usual problem. Perhaps there's the overwhelm of moving house and trying to clear a pathway into my studio where things have been strewn amidst the chaos. Plus the bliss of finally being in a house and wanting to slack out on the sofa.

I did something I've often done when I don't know how to get started. I went to the sea. I packed my special off-piste snowboarding rucksack - used for day long adventures. It helps me to create intention of letting go and exploring what comes up. Off to find a wild, windswept, isolated beach I did.

I packed a little portable set of watercolours. Perhaps the time is right now to explore watercolour but…note to self to not drift too far into the allure of what they can do - the pooling, the reticulation - not make 'watercolour paintings' per se but to use them in my own way. For this, they seem a good quick sketching tool.

The morning started with a thick freezing fog at home, the journey to the sea opened out and the long steep walk down brought a pool of sunshine to where I positioned my belongings on a flat boulder.

The day was beautiful.

The sea was calm, small waves dolloped the shoreline dragging pebbles away with them. Such a beautiful sounds that makes you sit very still and Listen. Out at sea cloud was low and colours were limited to gorgeous greys and aqua of the small cresting waves.

By the end of the day I was watching the freezing fog roll in and envelop the beach.

Play the above video to watch waves dolloping onto the shore in fog.

Thank you for reading this. If you would like to follow this studio journal and sign-up to my newsletter for exhibition updates, inspiration and available work you can sign up at sarahpoland.co.uk/subscribe I send it out some Sunday’s at 11am.

And do please reach out through the contact form if you have any questions.

Studio journal 3

Souvenance

I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human functions’ ______________________________________ Diane Di Prima, _____________Beat Poet (August 6, 1934 – October 25, 2020)

And so too the painter.

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Diane Di Prima was a poet and writer of the American Beat Generation.

Back in 2002 I went to Western Canada to meet a great friend of mine, to snowboard as she finished her season and to travel together up the West coast. We stopped a night or two in Tofino, B.C. I wasn’t sure at the time why I didn’t join her on a whale watching boat trip, but I drifted into a lovely bookshop, sat on the floor to browse a shelf and came across this wonderful book. Actually, it pretty much jumped out at me.

Some years prior, on a U.S. trip, someone I met recommended Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Another great book for that time in my life and it turned out, took the same route that I did. That was my introduction to the Beat Generation and so finding this book focusing on the Women was very exciting.

They are the reason I drink coffee - Coffee And Writing Go Together.

For me, a coffee taps into this culture and also our European cafe culture, particularly of the 50’s and 60’s. I Love the B&W photographs from these era’s, the starkness, the contrasts.

One of my favourite poems ever is Rant by Diane Di Prima - it is in this book. I also discovered Jay DeFeo and her incredible work The Rose, a 2,300 lb. painting which she spent eight years making.

The Beats in turn lead me to Patti Smith, punk poet, writer, rock musician’s thoughts and writing.

So this was the reason I missed the whale watching!

Jay DeFeo working on The Rose, 1958–66,
in her Fillmore Street studio, NYC 1960. Photo: Burt Glinn.

I’ve just gotta squeeze in a favourite photo…one of British painter Sandra Blow who lived in St. Ives for many years. I love Roger Mayne’s images of the artists there. The other Michael Gaca, director of Belgrave St. Ives took of me at Carn Galva after a bush fire in 2006. It was in my 2006 exhibition at the gallery Tuath (click for catalogue).

Sandra Blow (1925-2006) in her studio 1959 by Roger Mayne (1929-2014)

Sarah Poland 2006 by Michael Gaca