
Last week was my birthday week, so I took a short holiday to St Ives. It’s a place that’s growing on me, and I really enjoyed my stay – lots of good food, good art, walking round the beaches and generally chilling. The art there is so good – I found it very inspiring and came back with lots of ideas to try.
One highlight was the Tate St Ives Virginia Woolf exhibition. For me, it was worth going for the Laura Knight paintings alone: they are stunning. The paintings by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham were also fab – this one in particular. Alas, no photography was allowed, so I’ ve given the links, in case you want to take a look. It was wonderful to see all the paintings up close: you just don’t get any real idea of their scale or impact from books. And the room full of self portraits by women artists was just amazing: I discovered some artists there whose work I wasn’t even aware of. The exhibition’s touring the UK. Highly recommended.
The other galleries in St Ives also have lots of wonderful work – I particularly liked these little pots by Geoffrey Swindell in the Porthminster Gallery.

Lidded Vessel by Geoffrey Swindell
And now –
back to work 🙂