When my creative friend Sarah Roberts asked if I would like to join her in an artist residency at 'Brisons Veor', Cape Cornwall, this April I jumped at the chance! I had spent 2 weeks there in January 2025 which was such a wonderful experience immersing yourself in that environment. Being so close to the sea & elements is a joy plus having a 'quiet' time away from the usual distractions of phones, TV, WiFi is a really valuable time for anyone.
We began the residency by investigating the beach at Priest Cove. There was lots of colourful seaweed washed up on the strand line, unlike in January when a lot more 'rubbish' had come ashore. Of course the little fishing boats on the slip way always provide a great colour palette too.
The first full day was spent just getting some paint onto paper, just to make a start. Then gathering further inspiration from the area. I had been enjoying creating reference marks by making impression of textures such as rocks, wood, rope, metalwork etc it is rather addictive! I now have a little sketch book full of these pattern ideas for future use.
As the week progressed we got into the swing of things. One morning we collected some large pieces of seaweed from the cove & decided to use that to paint with. I am not sure why I had not thought of trying that before! Especially with my love of seaweed...Some of the marks the seaweed created had a wonderful sense of movement & indeed the process of creating involved quite a lot of energy too.
Further layers of colour were then applied to some of the initial seaweedy marks... I really enjoyed this experimentation & I am sure this will develop into a new body of work at some point. One of the other really useful exercises I did was to make a colour chart. Taking particular inspiration from the wild flowers & lichen this made me develop colours with I would not usually be drawn to in my practice. The sea thrift was quite a strong influence this time.
Boats & buoys inspiring the palette here...I kept a journal while I was on the residency with lots of colour notes & photos etc of the time spent in this location. As you can see I am not particularly tidy or organised when I'm working!
On the final day both Sarah & I both said we would have really loved a few more days...we had both relaxed into the experience & began to discover new elements to feed into our practices. However we are joining forces again this year, as we will be on a 2 week residency at
Mawddach in July. This will be another great opportunity to explore a new area & see how that influences our artwork?
I suggested that we laid out all the pieces we had generated in our time at Brisons Veor to actually appreciate how much we had done in such a short time...
Thank you Brisons Veor Charitable Trust for the opportunity to come & stay at the wonderful space once again. If you are interested in applying to take part in a residency yourself there is an call for applications at the moment - see here.
I can highly recommend the experience.
