Newlyn Art Gallery: A Wild Place Where Divinity Dwells, Daisy Rickman

This exhibition runs until 9th May 2026

This display of paintings was connected by a spiritual understanding of the Penwith landscape.  This place has a long history of it's own special brand of Christianity, a slightly more mystical melding known as Celtic Christianity.  Instead of sweeping away the mystical landscape here, Christianity embraced it.  Sites such as wells were adopted as holy and local deities merged to become Christian saints and traditions and stories were preserved.  This landscape has often attracted people with an interest in this spirituality and art and Daisy Rickman continues this tradition.

Her paintings included landscapes of standing stone lit by the moon and more abstract sacred geometry.  My favourites though featured Piskies.  A Piskie is the Cornish version of pixie, simplistically.  They are tiny magical folk who are often mischievous but generally friendly.  There were a number of paintings of piskies that at first glance might be mistaken for abstract geometrical pieces.  Instead they were a long line of piskies, linked hand to hand, dancing the serpent dance.  The serpent dance is traditional in Penzance and part of the Golowan festival, with a line of people moving through the street, twisting around.  

My favourite painting was the Piskies Lunar Lullaby at St Loy Cove.  The view is through trees to a moonlit sea beyond.  A chain of piskies dances through, and around, the trees.  They seem to be made of mist and energy and the roots of the trees glow with oranges in a lilac landscape.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Box: Journey's with Mai

This exhibition runs until the 14th June 2026 Sir Joshua Reynolds is one of the greats of British painting and will be a name familiar to many.  I had no idea he was born in Plympton, just outside Plymouth though.  He is a major 18th century European painter and the leading portrait artist of the time.  He was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Art and its first president. Portrait of Omai is considered his best work and a timeless masterpiece that is one of the best pieces of British art.  In 2022 the portrait was up for sale and in danger of leaving the UK with a hefty expected value of £50 million.  It was place under a 12 month exportation bar.  The National Portrait Gallery started a fund to raise money to buy the portrait and the Getty Museum asked to jointly purchase the painting so that it could be shared between both.  In March 2023, the exportation bar expired with only half of the required amount raised and it was announced that pro...
Read more

KARST: Discord and Harmony, Beryl Cook and Others

This exhibition runs until the 18th April This was my first visit to this lovely little gallery but it will not be my last.  The exhibition was inspired by the work of Beryl Cook and included several of her works.  Other artists had been selected for inclusion based on some sympathetic aspect of their work to Beryl's.  Some of these were obvious but others needed a little more digging I think.  This made for a diverse and thoughtful exhibition with plenty of fun pieces. It's always interesting, visiting a show put together with various artists.  So many artists have a body of work that speaks as a whole as they develop a style, their own language and explore a theme.  Individual pieces do not always make as much sense by themselves, unless you have a knowledge of that artist and their work.  Putting pieces of work together from different artists changes what they have to say and understanding their relevance is an interesting thing to work out. This ex...
Read more

RAMM: Exeter's Fine Arts Gallery, Highlights from the Collection

This exhibition runs until the 9th August 2026. This one room changes regularly to give an insight in to the fine art collection.  This is a pretty impossible task as the collection contains over 7000 pieces including paintings, prints, drawings, watercolours, miniatures and sculptures.  The current display includes only around 30 pieces, so highlights is definitely a good term for this display. Looking around the room, the pieces are split in to a few different categories, beginning with portraits.  One portrait is called a Man in a Red Suit and shows a man of colour wearing a red suit.  The artist is unknown and it dates from around 1740 to 1780.  A huge amount of research has been conducted on this painting and yet there are still no clear answers.  It has been credited to Sir Joshua Reynolds and I can see why but it may also be by Allan Ramsay.  Nobody knows who the sitter is either, even though attempts have been made to link to two different free...
Read more