Janie Cameron describes herself as a coastal artist. Her paintings are inspired by her walks on the south west coastal path near her home and studio. A teacher of art and masters level coach, she incorporates mindfulness practice into her art sessions.
She has undertaken courses at the Newlyn School of Art and has studied on the year-long Porthmeor Programme at St Ives School of Painting. In 2023 she joined Prime Women Artists, a supportive and creative network for women artists of all disciplines in Cornwall. Her work has been exhibited in Cornwall and Yorkshire.
A painting by this artist, entitled Laetitia and a Cornish Tin Mine (1967) is included in the collection of Cornwall County.
Melanie taught classes in botanical illustration at the Penzance School of Art, and for two years at Trevelyan House, Penzance (2003-4). She and her business partner, Vaughan WARREN then set up the PZag Gallery on New Street, Penzance, which ran up until about 2008 when it changed hands.
She was born Irene Margaret GODDARD in London. She attended Chelsea School of Art from 1930 to 1935, where her tutors included Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. She also spent time at Hornsey School of Art. After teaching in London and working at Harefield Hospital (1940-1946) she married and moved to Newlyn, where she settled and raised a family.
Later, when she had more time to devote to painting, she focused on abstracts based on windows and doors as well as old family photogrphs. Her work was shown at the Chenil Gallery in the 1970s and at Newlyn Orion Gallery in the 1980s. In 1985 she held a solo show at Penzance Arts Centre.
A craftworker who exhibited at NAG in 1937 in an Unspecified category.
Thomas Campbell Bennett was born on 17th January 1858 at Enville, Staffordshire. His father was the village schoolmaster. He showed early talent as an artist and by 1881 while still living at the family home in Enville he is recorded as an artist. He exhibited at RSA Birmingham from 1882 until 1906. In 1882 his address is given as Stourbridge but by 1887 he was exhibiting from Tavistock, Devon where he came into contact with the Devon artists, Widgery, Pike and Ager. He married Eliza Mary Dudley in 1886 in Staffordshire and by 1888 they had moved to Cornwall and bought Hingston House at St Ann's Chapel near Gunnislake.
Besides being a prolific painter he was also a teacher of art at a Launceston school. His wife died in 1903 and he continued to live at Hingston House until 1923 with his daughter, Margorie. After she married Edmund Palmer, the son of a farmer at Colcharton, Tavistock in 1922, Hingston House was sold and he went to live with them at Bideford. Many of his paintings from that time are of Colcharton Farm. He became a founder member of the Westward Ho! Art Club, Bideford, Devon and was a well known figure in the town. He died aged 90 on 7th October 1948 and was buried in the churchyard at St Ann's Chapel.
Jessica Campbell-Plover is a contemporary urban feminist artist and designer currently based in Cornwall. In 2014 she obtained a BA (Hons) in Fashion Design from the University of South Wales. This was followed by an MA in Costume Design from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama.
Lar Cann was born in Plymouth. The industrial workings of Bodmin Moor's granite quarries and mineralogy serve as a visual stimulus to his paintings. Painting since the age of five, he has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in many mixed exhibitions world-wide.
His breathtakingly evocative work was on show at the Royal Institution of Cornwall in the TERRAIN exhibition in 2015.
Cornish-born (Falmouth) Michael Canney was of critical importance to the life of the NAG from 1956, when he took on the Curator's role from Eileen HUNT who had filled the post over the previous four years. Canney and his wife Madeleine moved into the rooms in the basement of the little Gallery which had been provided to previous curators in lieu of a living wage. From the first, he set out to instil a professional and energetic sense of 'forwarding art' rather than simply 'hanging the work' that had prevailed for several decades and through the war years.
Jeremy LE GRICE commented: 'The appointment of Michael Canney as curator in 1956 consolidated the transformation of the appearance of exhibitions. The pleasure he took in the company of artists, the powers of observation, mimicry and anecdote, together with a reckless sense of humour and excitement in the earlier days of his job, sharpened the atmosphere considerably.'
In 1957 the Gallery was so much changed from its renovations that 150 exhibits had to be turned away in what was called by the Cornishman (Apr 11) 'Newlyn Art Gallery's Revival'. The next years were filled with innovative and exciting exhibitions, and the beginning of links with larger organisations like the newly formed Arts Councils.
Michael was aided and abetted in his own tenure (seven and a half years in all) at NAG by Peter LANYON, newly arrived at the NSA from the Penwith Society at St Ives, and soon to be president of the Newlyn Society of Artists. It was, perhaps, partly due to Peter's death in a gliding accident in 1964 that determined Canney to leave Cornwall where he had been born and first studied art (Redruth and Camborne's schools of art, and under Leonard John FULLER). He had grown tired of the perpetual struggle to make ends meet, and also the lack of time and opportunity to concentrate on his own work rather than continually supporting the work of others.
His first thought was to set up a school of painting and arts himself, with the plan that this could be situated in Porthleven, but the financial situation did not prove favourable and the idea was abandoned. He taught part-time in Plymouth, and then for a year took over the Visiting Directorship of the Gallery with teaching duties at the University of California campus at Santa Barbara. In 1966 he returned to England and took up a staff post at the West of England College of Art (later Bristol Polytechnic, now University of the West of England). He remained there until 1983 when he and Madeleine went abroad to live and work in Italy.
He worked directly with Barbara HEPWORTH on an exhibition of British sculpture in Penlee Park, Penzance in 1957. His closest friends and colleagues were Peter LANYON, Paul FEILER, John MILLER, Patrick HERON and many others who worked with him in Cornwall.
Upon their return from Italy to the UK he and Madeleine lived in Devizes, Wiltshire. In 1995 Michael and Madeleine contributed much to the celebrations of the 100th anniversary of NAG, and the 'Michael Canney Notebook', put together with Melissa HARDIE, is an important reservoir of information for that period in the life of Cornish art.
Florence Canning is believed to have been born in Wiltshire. She exhibited in Devonport in 1885, and in Plymouth in 1895. In 1911 she joined her friend Bertha COCKERHAM who had been visiting St Ives for some years, and who had settled there from 1909. The two had previously worked together teaching painting in Yelverton, Devon, but Canning had retired from art due to extensive eye trouble. According to the 1911 Census, she and Bertha were living at Barnoon, St Ives.
Together they bought 'Ocean Wave Studio' in 1919, suggested by Tovey as probably a later Borlase Smart studio (Tovey 2009, photo of interior, p130).
Canning moved to Cornwall c1997, and settled in Hayle, while working from a studio in St Ives (2001). He was born in Oxfordshire and worked there as a full-time landscape artist before painting in the Welsh hills.
Fiona Cant works from a studio in Mount Hawke near Truro. In 2023 she joined Prime Women Artists, a supportive and creative network for women artists of all disciplines in Cornwall.
She is a regular exhibitor at STISA open shows.
Capper has been producing wood turned art since 1998 and has exhibited widely, both locally and in national competitions, where he has successfully achieved prizes.
Sophie Capron was born in Northampton but the family moved to Cornwall when she was very young. After travels in Australia, she became a student at Winchester School of Art. During this time she spent three months in Japan. Subsequently she visited Central and Latin America. Returning to Cornwall in 2010, Capron settled down to teach at at the Roseland Academy, and to pursue her artistic career by taking studio space at the Old Bakery Studios in Truro.
Her work explores textures through multimedia. She is intrigued by the way that surfaces change and decay over time, concealing and revealing memories and stories. Capron's work has been shown in Europe, Japan and the USA. In 2017 she participated in the International Biennale in France.
Born in Wimbledon, Surrey, Michael became interested in pottery while he was a child, but it was whilst at Oxford (where he was reading Greats) that he announced to his surprised contemporaries his intention of becoming a country potter. He was taught to throw by William Fishley HOLLAND at Braunton in North Devon where he spent his holidays and visited Lake's Pottery in Truro, then came to the Leach Pottery as its first student (1923-26). He shared an interest in slipware with Bernard LEACH, and was greatly influenced by the pots of HAMADA. He also worked with Leach on the first craft exhibition of their pottery at the Newlyn Art Gallery (Christmas 1924).
After 3 years he left to re-found the century-old but derelict pottery at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. He experimented in industrial design at Stoke, and he founded and later enlarged the Wenford Bridge Pottery near Bodmin in Cornwall (1939), producing earthenware and stoneware. He worked in Ghana in West Africa from 1942 to 1948 as an instructor, and from 1951 to 1965 he established and ran a pottery and training centre at Abuja. He also traveled extensively, touring America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand making pots, demonstrating, writing and teaching. On his return to Wenford he wrote his autobiographical Pioneer Potter about his world travels, published in 1969.
The son of Michael Cardew and raised at Winchcombe Pottery in Gloucestershire, Seth studied painting at Chelsea School of Art (1952-54) and sculpture at Camberwell (1957-59) before returning to his pottery roots. After the death of his father (who had been the first pupil of Bernard LEACH and inspired by Hamada) he took over the family pottery.
Greatly influenced by his father with regard to the shape of his pots, Sethh decorates with brushwork and scraffito, using his wood-fired kiln to bring to life the interesting and sometimes unexpected glaze effects from reduction firing. Seth feels that forms must be lively, that 'shape is 99% of the pot and the pot should sing'. He leads workshops nationally and abroad.
Paul Cardew has a studio at Rame Barton in east Cornwall. He is a great-nephew of the renowned ceramicist Michael CARDEW. Paul obtained a BA (Hons) from Loughborough Art College followed by a teaching diploma from Leicester University, then went on to lecture at Exeter Art College. Subsequently he owned three potteries employing 300 people. He is famous for his collection of limited edition teapots, which are sold all over the world. He has been a designer for Portmeirion, Royal Doulton and the Tea Council, and designed and manufactured the NatWest pigs. He was also associated for six years with the Walt Disney Company. In 1999 his business expanded to include the USA and Canada.
Carey was born in Scotland, and is both an artist and a musician. He studied Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art for 4 years until 1981, and then decided to re-settle in Cornwall the following year. His love of landscape painting, first discovered in Scotland, has continued, fitting in well with the plein air tradition of Cornish painters. A good look at his excellent website reveals a wide range of coastal and in-land subjects, and the expansion of his pallette to the warmer climes of France and Spain where he also exhibits his work.
His home studio is in Falmouth, which allows him to paint viewing the sea.
Tamsin Carey is a landscape artist based in Cornwall, whose landscape and coastline have shaped her view of the world since early childhood.
Cargeeg became a keen scholar of Cornish history and language, being among those who actively tried to revive its use before WWII. Using only hand-tools and skills practised over many years in his small workshop at Trevean, Mellanear Road, Hayle (and later at the Old Forge, Lelant), he created a wide range of beautiful wares in copper, always with a strong Cornish style. The Celtic designs and intricately formed lacework found on his pieces were taken from ancient designs found on some of the very earliest Cornish monumental stonework.
He was also a watercolour artist, painting the Cornish landscape, but much of his painting is presently untraced. There are some of his copperware items at Lanhydrock House in Bodmin and the Guildhall in London as well as in many private collections.
In 1934, he became a Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd GK, much to his pleasure and pride, and took the Bardic name of 'Tan Dyvarow', which translates from the Cornish as 'Undying Fire'. During WWII, he worked in the Imperial Chemical Industries plant at Hayle, having moved from Trevean with his wife Winifred (nee Hoskin) to a bungalow near Loggans Mill. His contribution and research into the work of the Gorsedd can be seen not only in its pre-War history but also in the unique copper regalia and the horn still regularly used on Bardic ceremonial occasions. He died in 1981, a few years after his wife.
[Information provided by Peter Browning to Penlee House]
Janet Carlton was born in Nottinghamshire and moved to Cornwall in 2015. She studied Art & Design, Fine Art and Interior Design in London, and obtained an MA from Derby University.
The artist, a clergyman from Truro, was awarded a First Bronze Medal in the Annual Exhibition of the RCPS for Smuggler's Cave (Amateur Watercolour section). No further information is available at present.
Nickie Carlyon works from Trewidden Garden Studios at Buryas Bridge near Penzance. Her work, which crosses between figurative and landscape, is influenced by social history and her interpretation of the given subject.