MARK HEARLD’s deep love for the natural world from childhood days has been the driving force behind his work ever since - through his time at Glasgow College of Art and his Master’s Degree in Natural History Illustration at the Royal College of Art, and now in his professional career as an artist-designer. Collage has become a favourite medium.  Combined with painting, this very immediate form of image-making adds an extra dimension to his lively pictures of farmyard and country subjects.  Much of this current collection was created here in West Penwith this summer.  Well known for his lino-prints and lithographs too, Mark’s framed Artist Proofs of earlier editions as well as current work are in the exhibition.

TESSA NEWCOMB’s paintings show an unerring ability to catch the moment.  Snatches of people’s lives, caught up in corners of yards or allotments add piquancy and lively interest to her work.  Fleeting glimpses of figures draw us into the narrative of daily life, often imbued with humour. Although based in East Anglia, Tessa paints wherever she happens to be, and this includes a recent visit to St Ives.  A wealth of insight into her working life is revealed in Philip Vann’s recent book about her.

ANGIE LEWIN is a printmaker par excellence!  Lino-cuts, wood-engraving, lithographs and silkscreen printing are all embraced in her work - coupled with a love and knowledge of horticulture.  She observes nature closely and intimately, revealing the delicacy of tiny seedheads, the fine lines of insect eggs on flower buds as well as the distant view of swathes of plants and foliage.  Inspired by the clifftops and saltmarshes of her native Norfolk coast as well as the Scottish Highlands, she depicts these contrasting environments and their native flora in a stylisation which has become recognisably her own.

The themes of transience, fragility and potential feature strongly in ANNA LAMBERT’s work too.  She hand-builds ceramics in earthenware.  By coiling and modelling, colouring and decorating she creates vessels which echo the form of nature they are describing - hence bird’s nest bowls, twig candlesticks, cockerel tureens and so on.  Highly individual and beautifully detailed, each piece works as a sculptural object in its own right, whether it is put to domestic use or not.  Her connectedness to the earth around her is not only in the imagery she derives from it but, as she says; “there are connections with a more primitive past and with childlike urges to make something from the earth, but by using skill and thoughtfulness, objects of beauty can be created.”

GUY ROYLE’s beaten silver and gold jewellery is bold in scale and presence.  He etches, incises, inlays and carves the precious metals and stones with exquisite craftsmanship and the simplest of tools to form brooches, necklaces, earrings and bangles.  The marks he makes often resonate with those in the adornments of primitive man, though Guy’s jewellery is essentially contemporary in style and a joy to wear.

Out of the earth come the ancient stones and rocks that BAZ MEHEW shapes into the forms he can see within them - bird’s heads, fish, ducks and shaman-type animals. Drawn from an interest in Inuit, Maori, African and Celtic cultures, his intuitive sense of imagery within the material results in carvings that are both deft and relaxed, giving an essential sense of ‘rightness’ to the piece.  Serpentine from the nearby Lizard is a favourite to work with.