Coast and Country

Master painter Michael Porter joins Whitewater Contemporary later this month for a solo exhibition inspired by Cornwall’s coast and rural paths.

Situated in the heart of Polzeath, Whitewater specialises in painting, sculpture, handmade print and ceramics by both emerging and leading contemporary artists like Michael Porter, who has lived and worked in Cornwall for three decades. Michael is known for his extraordinary interpretations of the landscape. His artworks are drawn from the overlooked minutiae of our environment, from a single pebble embedded in the ground, to an autumn leaf drifting across a body of water, or a tangle of roots or twigs.

He was born and raised in the rugged and beautiful scenery of Derbyshire, and went on to study at Nottingham College of Art, Derby College of Art, and Chelsea School of Art. He became a Fellow of Gloucestershire College of Art in 1973 and worked at his London studio for more than twenty years before moving to West Cornwall in 1997. Wherever he has lived, from the forested landscape of Derbyshire to the urban heart of Bow in East London, Michael’s creative focus has remained firmly on the wonders of nature. “I can’t see how anyone exists without nature,” he says. “I know people who have lived in the city the whole of their life, but I couldn’t do that. There was no nature at all in Bow, so I used to go back to Derbyshire every few weeks with my camera, for inspiration. When we moved to Newlyn, I started to explore the nature of this place, and it was strangely familiar. The landscape towards St Ives is similar to the landscape of Derbyshire, all rolling green and exposed granite edges.”

Michael now occupies a large studio on the quayside, that was once a working fish cellar. He spends his time walking the coast path, taking photographs and collecting natural objects as source material for his paintings. Michael’s intense engagement with the landscape is based only on locations that are familiar to him. “I have to have a history with a place to paint it,” he says. “That is a constant that runs through all my work.” On his walks, Michael picks up odd stones, shells, seaweed, and other everyday things. “I like the idea of taking something ordinary and showing people that if you look closely, there is beauty in it.”

Back in the studio, he makes intensely figurative paintings of these objects, often placing a stone or shell on top of a flat canvas and painting it directly from life. “I am always looking for the simplest way to interpret the thing I am looking at,” he says, “a stone for example, that says something to me in the way the light shapes it.” He then paints over this first image in layers, pairing precise figuration with a free-flowing mix of oil, acrylic and watercolour “so you are looking through to the image, just as you do in nature. When you walk through the landscape you see it in layers – you see one tree, and then another behind it, and then another. That’s what my work is about.”

Michael’s skill as a painter, and his experimental approach to building the image, have made him one of the UK’s most respected artists. Over his long career he has received awards including the National Gallery Artist-in-Residence Award, the London University Lorne Award, the RWA Odin Award, an Honorary Doctorate from Derby University, and an Honorary Fellowship of University College Falmouth, but he sees his impressive career in more understated terms: “What I am doing is simple” he says. “The objects that I find in a place, that define a place, that’s what fascinates me – those things, together with my memory of a place gathered over many years. If I can communicate a little of that in my work, I call that success.”

See Michael Porter’s Solo Exhibition, Coast & Country, from 22nd August to 16th September at Whitewater Contemporary Gallery, The Parade, Polzeath, PL27 6SR and at wwcg.co.uk

Whitewater Contemporary Gallery
www.wwcg.co.uk