This June, following on from her Cape Cornwall collection of last autumn, Whitewater Contemporary presents new work by landscape artist Rebecca Styles. Titled Hawthorn, Hedgerow and Heath, this exhibition continues Rebecca’s enquiry into the essence of ‘place’, with an emphasis on creating landscape with landscape - using local earth pigments, grit and charcoal with her oil paints. Inspired by ‘plein air’ sketches of West Cornwall’s diverse heathland flora, from windswept hawthorns to sculptural succulents, these paintings capture the vibrant colour and pattern of hedgerows and moorland in the full bloom of summer.
They take the viewer on a walk along remote rural lanes, over Cornish hedges heavy with wildflowers, past ancient stone circles and through heat-hazed fields of long summer grass, lush with foxgloves, buttercups, meadow thistle and wild garlic.
Rebecca Styles was born in West Yorkshire. She is a recipient of a Visual Artist and Craft Makers (VACMA) Award, and a Creative Scotland Artist Bursary for her work involving local raw pigments and traditional paint making. Recent projects have included her Finding Lewis, Bigger Than Us and site-specific Alchemy exhibitions in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, and residencies at Brisons Veor Cape Cornwall, Casa Tagumerche Tenerife, and Thorp Perrow Arboretum North Yorkshire.
