​Jane Jones...   
Circles can represent continuity, perfection, movement, femininity, completeness, fulfilment, strength, timelessness, a flat or a 3D shape, self-containment, mystery and beauty. I am drawn to them and they constantly feature in my artwork.   My ‘All Fall Down’ series began as an exploration of colour mixing with oil based printmaking inks. I cut circles from squares of lino block and began the process of inking up each block individually and running it through the old press in my studio. As I got into the momentum of inking and printing, the process led to the image.   Often the ideas that emerge are at first unconscious. The ‘falling down’ became the theme. I repeatedly inked up the plates and ran them through the press, leaving days between each print in order for the ink to dry. After a few days I had numerous sheets of paper hanging up in the studio to dry but few seemed resolved.  I then combined prints by collaging shapes from one to the other. The result is the prints that you see...

​Chris Waring...   ​

​Rosalie Wyatt...   
​As a small child Rosalie was taken to Plymouth City museum and Art Gallery and saw an exhibition of work by refugee children.  All her childhood work to GCE O-Level was lost when Rosalie's family disintegrated. During university in Leeds and work in London Rosalie made very few marks but enjoyed galleries and bought others' work.
 
On early retirement  in Sheffield Rosalie could not afford full time college but took part in tuition and workshops where she learnt to make freer larger marks in various media, and also exhibited, mainly with others.  Above all Rosalie wanted to return to the coast-anywhere...
 
In 2011 she returned to Plymouth after 50 years and finds it an ideal setting for her work.
Drawn to rocks and wild places, but also to colour, Rosalie continues to experiment using ink, acrylics, and other water based media, also beachcombing and upcycling things.  She feels very privileged to continue exhibiting with Ashtorre Artists, endebted to all at The Artmill, Peninsula Arts, and many more who contribute to Plymouth's vibrant art scene.
​

This year Bishop Cornish and Burraton Primary Schools were also invited to show their skills at portraying the many ways human activity, waste plastic and pollution impact on the marine environment which is so important to us here in the south west.  An enthusiastic response was received from the children who produced two large artworks on display in the upstairs gallery at Ashtorre until September 9th. One group based their work on 'Duffy’s Lucky Escape' by children's author Ellie Jackson from Looe whilst the other group researched, identified and then illustrated the many types of single-use plastic that finds its way into our oceans.

'Art in Pieces' - an interactive event
And that is not all because the show also included a section where visitors could have a go at making art for themselves by participating with others in recreating a painting from a well known Cornish artist with the final result becoming apparent as the task is completed.

How to find us
With superb views down the Tamar and refreshments available on the terrace, it’s an inspiring location for such an exhibition and well worth a visit! There's ample parking nearby and if coming by rail it is a short walk down from Saltash station. Directions and further information can be found here > find / contact us

Below are some examples of members' work...

For our interactive challenge last year we featured a scene from The Saltash Regatta. Here is a slideshow of daily progress...​

Eleanor Russell-Hsieh's new journey has begun recently working on these original monotype prints inspired by her son's love of ocean creatures and the plight of our seas. Using a method of completely inking a plate, then using sticks, cotton buds and rags to remove some of the ink a 'subtractive' image is created. Eleanor completes the process by running this plate with paper on top through an etching press leaving her with a unique one-off print.

​Chrissie Russell
​The natural world is my inspiration in art as I’m really fascinated with patterns in nature, particularly related to the plant world. I look for ways of translating them into printmaking and I’m constantly experimenting with different techniques including direct or stencils with collage. This is a journey that takes me down many avenues and a few cul-de-sacs!

​Rosalie Wyatt
​Embarking on a new journey Rosalie has used clay to work from a tiny on-site ink ​sketch of a lifesize carving of a woman in coal. From clay to pastel then by her usual route to an acrylic painting. No photograph, just a vivid memory of a hot day in Merthyr Tydfil.  Other journeys will follow...

​Neil Mawdsley
Golitha Falls. Mixed Media. The fall of white water in the deep ravines of Bodmin Moor has a dramatic effect on the cool green shadows of this enchanted corner of Cornwall. Flashes of sunlight add bold colours to the rushing waters. This painting started with watercolour moving on with acrylics and coloured pencil. The painting was selected for the professional artists Open Art Display at the Council House, Plymouth.

​John Wheeley
The group first saw John’s strong photographic work at a local art show, and so for the first time we invited a photographer to join us. The images are very striking and unusual, and we feel that they will fit in very well in this art show…after all what is art?  John says "As my primary artistic medium is photography, I feel extremely privileged, and not a little apprehensive, with this opportunity. This will certainly be a “New Journey” for me. 

​Paul Kemp
Paul's preferred medium is painting in watercolours and the three examples here represent journeys across Dartmoor. One of the paintings shows Bowerman's Nose, a stack of weathered granite on the northern slopes of Hayne Down, about a mile from Hound Tor and close to the village of Manaton.

As you no doubt already know, Ashtorre Artists seek to engage with young artists from the community who have in past years tackled subjects such as single-use plastics, the Final Straw campaign and the plight of Duffy the turtle a character from a children’s book called Duffy’s Lucky Escape by local author Ellie Jackson.

This year the group welcomes pupils from Burraton Primary School in Saltash and Weston Mill Primary in Plymouth who will be showing their own interpretations of ‘New Journey’ by exploring patterns in nature especially those associated with journeys and migration.

Two of our members, Eleanor Russell-Hsieh and Chrissie Russell, visited Burraton Primary School to work with Year 4 pupils. We looked into the reasons why animals migrate and the incredible geographical journeys sometimes undertaken. The children also studied close-up images of migratory species, in particular the Painted Lady butterfly, swallows and puffins.

To create artwork that had a strong visual impact the children were encouraged not to use pencils or rubbers but to explore the use of solid blocks of colour to create bold patterns that were not necessarily in the correct colour!  The results were extremely vibrant and we thank the staff and pupils for their enthusiasm. We look forward to mounting the work on screens at the exhibition in August in a manner that tells the story.

​For this workshop members of the group brought in an item or two and built a long still life in the centre of the studio and arranged themselves both sides of it.

Having laid out a continuous length of lining paper, each person drew on it just the objects they could see in front of them using black and white. There were overlaps and double images. Some employed solid blocks of tone whilst others incorporated very delicate lines.

For the second part of the session we swapped positions and, using a cut-out frame to isolate another person's version of the still life, we re-interpreted their drawing to produce a new image but this time in colour.

The above was intended as just a bit of fun with not too much concern for the final results, nevertheless it produced some interesting and varied images and enabled us to become familiar with one another’s way of working especially as five new members were present.

The final task however was to show the group an example of one's own work that we had brought in and give a two-minute presentation. It was good to get a taster of the extent of artwork that this 2019 exhibition will bring to Ashtorre.

Members of Ashtorre Artists had an exciting workshop in February led by Plymouth based artist Jill Coughman, centering on the theme of their forthcoming exhibition 'New Journey'.

Artists were invited to draw an imagined 'first journey' to a place they would like to visit, and from there take a variety of drawing and painting techniques using found and unusual objects, including toy cars dipped in paint or ink, and make a large painting, focusing on mark making and experimentation. Brushes and palette knives were definitely left to one side!

The final creative act involved taking a section of their large paintings, and produce a smaller, carefully observed image, again focusing on mark making, but using whatever colours they felt made the most successful image.

All artists produced a dynamic experimental piece, working outside their comfort zones, where the process was more important than the final artwork and are looking forward to the next workshop.

This year we recreated a painting from a well-known Cornish artist. It was an opportunity to focus on a small section and impart one's own interpretation. In so doing the identity of the painting was revealed to be The Pier Head by Stanhope Forbes 1910, oil on canvas, 123.5 x 149.5cm currently in the Geelong Gallery Collection, Australia.

After his early training in London, Stanhope Forbes travelled to France in 1880 where he studied initially at Leon Bonnat’s Paris studio before heading to Brittany where he first began to paint in the open air, a practice he favoured for the remainder of his career.

​In 1884, back in Britain, Forbes settled in the picturesque Cornish fishing village of Newlyn near Penzance, and along with his artist wife Elizabeth, became a leading figure in the growing colony of artists there and in nearby St Ives

Newlyn provided Forbes and other members of the Newlyn School of impressionist painters with something of the same quality of light they had enjoyed in France and which, along with the unpretentious maritime subjects in their midst, was a constant source of inspiration. The figures seen in paintings by Forbes and his associates were mostly modelled on the local villagers and fishermen.

Luncheon of the Boating Party is by French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
(Oil on canvas, dimensions 1.3 m x 1.73 m, created 1880–1881)
It was included in the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition in 1882 and identified as the best painting in the show by three critics. Location now: The Phillips Collection.

To extend the scope of the exhibition again this year to include other members of the Saltash community, two groups of young artists are also exhibiting their works. Pupils from Bishop Cornish and Burraton Primary Schools enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to display their artistic creations in the context of an established exhibition and to explore the related theme of 'Flotsam and Jetsam' with some very interesting results.

Jill Coughman, the artist who led two workshops at Burraton Primary School, explained she collected flotsam and jetsam from the beaches and shoreline outside Ashtorre and took the collected objects to her studio in order to make studies of them for her own work as well as examples for the pupils.

She demonstrated how observational drawings were made of the pieces, all quite small, broken and damaged by their time in the sea. She then investigated different areas and transferred the most interesting design onto a 19cm square. Using a limited colour range of one primary colour and its complementary opposite, she blocked in, making sure the white of the paper was covered.

The pupils all had a selection of flotsam and jetsam to make their own drawings using pencil and line only. They selected the most interesting design to draw onto their square and they too used one primary, its complementary opposite, and in some cases a brown to add colour to the design however they felt best suited their composition. They could blend and scratch (sgraffito) into the oil pastels if they felt it enhanced their art work.

Each class had approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes (including the demonstrations) to produce these fantastic images and we applaude their superb efforts in such a short space of time. The composite artwork, arranged and mounted by Jill, will be on display at the exhibition.

​Here is a small excerpt of what is quite a large artwork...

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Chrissie Russell...
After going to the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, I was trying to analyse why I was so inspired. I think it was the variety of techniques used by so many artists using different mediums and totally varied techniques. So as I view the exhibition at Ashtorre I feel the same thing. There are painting images that are inspired by music, pen and ink drawings that I’ve seen the instigation of at Looe, monotype prints in circles using different tools for mark making. I gaze admiringly at different methods of print making including drypoint, linoprinting, collagraph and chine colle. I linger by abstract oil painting and collage and I’m inspired by the minimal lines of life drawing. There are many more techniques used here to make art. What can other people see here?

In addition to our main show 'ART ON THE EDGE' we have an exhibition in the downstairs cafe exploring the subject of 'CAFE'.  Artists through the ages have been intrigued with the subject, maybe because a lot of time is spent debating ideas in cafe´s, who knows, but here we have another dozen or so new interpretations of the theme for your delictation!

Gillian Thomas...   When I joined a watercolour group some 25 yrs ago little did I foresee how my art might develop.  The influence of various tutors introduced me to different media, to other ways of looking at and treating subject matter as well as considering what I was trying to achieve. Richard Allman has introduced me to new approaches to art which I have found inspiring and liberating, for which I am most grateful.

Chris Waring...   I think that my artwork is always 'on the edge' simply because I rarely seem to know beforehand exactly where it will end up. I usually start with a vague idea of colour or shape but that soon gets overtaken as the work progresses. Sometimes I literally have to shove it over the edge in order to find a satisfying resolution.
After a while, and with some happy chance, it will begin to feel right and then I am able to relax into it and bring it all together.

Last year's interactive exhibit  was eventually revealed to be based on Fernand Léger's 'Les Loisirs' completed in 1949 and also known as 'Hommage a Louis David'

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Ashtorre Artists emerged out of the Draw Bridge project in 2009 which was led by Richard Allman of Plymouth and John Forster of Saltash to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Brunel’s bridge. Each year since then the group representing both sides of the River Tamar have come together to show new works responding to the chosen theme. 

The main exhibition is in the upper gallery space at Ashtorre with the much smaller café exhibition on the ground floor.

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In order to widen the scope of this year's Ashtorre Artists Summer Exhibition, it was decided to devote two screens for community use and invite local primary schools to join us in exploring the theme of 'Journey'.

We received an enthusiastic response from Bishop Cornish and Burraton schools who have a section devoted to their artwork. At the invitation of Burraton School, two of the artists visited classes there to talk about how a professional artist would approach a subject and explore it as they worked to produce final pieces to exhibit. 

The artists showed original drawings and sketchbooks and enthused the children to develop their ideas and produce a wealth of exciting artworks. The classes involved represent the oldest and youngest pupils so we should have an interesting variety of drawings and paintings on display in the main gallery space upstairs at Ashtorre Rock.

We hope the children will bring their families to see their creations during the holidays.

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