- Venue
- Cornwall Contemporary Gallery
- Location
Maggie Matthews –Painter of the Coastline EdgeMaggie who lives and works in West Penwith has commented about her approach to her subject matter," ……the land itself has been reduced to islands of form, hanging in space. I walk on the cliffs, find a sheltered spot and spend the day sketching, arranging the scene until something excites me……my colours are not naturalistic or symbolic, simply intuitive……back at the studio I pull out the compositions and paint them over and over until there's a point where it works."
Her work can be seen in a wide variety of Cornish galleries from Badcocks in Newlyn to the Contemporary gallery in Penzance and the Great Atlantic Edge in St Just. Her attractive canvases are easily recognized by their splendid use of colours, mauves, cobalt blues, turquoises and complementary yellows and pinks. Their colours appear to have become more vivid as her work has progressed. Because her work is attractive and sells well, some proponents of conceptual art may have underestimated it. However, her paintings have such a moving and lyrical quality derived from the subject matter of nature herself. They speak for themselves and lift your mood from the moment that they capture your eye.The compositions, abstractly derived from the landscape of the coast, cliff and beaches hold your interest. These have a musical or harmonic quality with intriguing forms, circles, loops and ellipses-or accidental runs –or liquid layering which are diverting, charming and engaging. This is particularly true of her mixed media canvases that have biological or fossil forms, like shells and sea-creatures. It feels as though you were a child again and enchanted by what you find when you turn over a large rock on the beach and you see an unusual white shell or the red serrated edges of a starfish. Or as though you are looking at plankton or tiny crustaceans for the first time under a microscope.The harmonies are set up very often by similar hues-shades of red or blues. White is used to raise the brightness; black occasionally to add definition. The planes of colour add dimensions upon successive planes-like seawater as it comes into the shore. So time and movement are present in the work as well. As Sarah Brittain, Director of the Cornwall Contemporary, has written in a recent catalogue, “It is Maggie Matthew’s honest and inherent love for colour and vibrancy combined with her attention to the lost details of our everyday topography that have propelled her into being one of Cornwall’s foremost abstract painters.”
Maggie comments how she has become,” inspired by the familiar stretch of coastline around my home, exploring the margin between land and sea. Walking the coastal paths with their lofty views, resting in the sheltered coves, searching the beaches and jewel like rock pools for pebbles and shells has resulted in a collection of paintings informed by this ever changing tidal world.”
