I recently organised an art reunion for 'our' Landscape Mentoring Group from Newlyn School of Art. We are a group of 16 people and astonishingly 12 of us found time to meet for 3 days in Dorset. We are a very diverse bunch of landscape painters with different styles who had been cooped up in our studios all winter battling to get inspiration indoors.
We have the common love of enjoying being outdoors in nature and all needed some socialising and companionship. I was moved that so many people travelled miles to take part from East Sussex, Cornwall, Devon, London and Cambridge.
The key to the event was a beautiful setting and in this case it was the exploration of 2 famous North Dorset Hills, Hod and Hambledon, both neolithic sites.
The wonderful Art Stable Gallery is conveniently situated below the hill with not one but 2 exhibitions of landscape painting: Henrietta Hoyer Millar and Liz Somerville. www.theartstable.co.uk.
There was coffee and food available for stragglers to hang out at the cafe https://goldhillfarmkitchen.co.uk with organic veg, food and bread available from the farm shop.
Messums Wiltshire wasn’t far away with its fabulous barn and a great exhibition of ceramics for those who didn’t fancy braving the vertical hills.
The down side was Storm Kathleen and with a force 8 wind howling around the hill our adventure necessitated wearing several layers of clothing carrying small sketchbooks and doing quick sketches, but no one seemed to mind despite pages flying everywhere.
It was only after the event that I reflected on the importance of taking courses of any sort in the presence of other people, creating a ‘community’ who will support you when the going in the art world gets tough. People who know the battles you went through to get where you happen to be at this moment.
We had all been through the very tough year with 6 weekends of discussion and criticism of our work in an effort to create resilience in an effort to push our work to another level. Even surviving that experience has forged bonds that you could never get doing courses online. It’s just too easy to evade criticism and feedback to fall back into your comfort zone. We learned more from the discussions and interactions with one another than we did from any of the tutors and from just observing how other people managed.
And there comes a point where we all need to go solo and become self sufficient rather than become a course groupie.
Some of the group have teamed up to exhibit together in smaller groups, others are entering competitions, teaching workshops or taking part in art residencies as far afield as the Fair Isles. We could never have done this if we hadn't met in person.
We are already planning the next one.
Meantime I’m going for a long lie down in a darkened room.
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