In Bloom
Cornwall Today Magazine
June 2018
Words by Alex Wade
Photographs by Mike Newman
Artist Maggie Matthews has a cracking summer show at Cornwall Contemporary.
Maggie Matthews is on good form. We meet on a sunny Saturday morning in Penzance's Cornwall Contemporary gallery, where Matthews works part-time. On show are works by Janet Lynch, an artist who, like Matthews, is part of the fabric of the west Cornwall art scene. Matthews is generous to a fault. ”l love Janet's work,” she says, in almost her first sentence. ”And I love Janet, too. She’s such an energetic, positive person. ”
Knowing Janet myself, I can only agree, but it’s impossible not to be impressed by Matthews’ openness. I’m at the gallery to talk about her forthcoming show, In Bloom, and most artists would prefer to concentrate on the business in hand, rather than praise work by others. But Matthews isn’t most artists. And she’s on a roll. ”Sarah has a knack for finding brilliant artists and showing them here,” she says, referring to Cornwall Contemporary’s director, Sarah Brittain-Mansbridge ”Look at some of her regulars, the likes of Neil Pinkett and Al Lindsay. They’re fantastic artists. We’ve all benefited hugely from Sarah’s help and support."
If it is true that Brittain is one of Cornwall’s unsung artistic heroes (and I’d argue that it is), it’s also beyond doubt that Matthews is one of the county’s artistic success stories. Born and bred in Blaina, a mining village in Wales, Matthews fell in love with Cornwall when she was at Exeter College of Art studying art. ”I used to go on field trips with the Geology Society,” she says. ”On one of them, we visited Cot Valley, near Cape Cornwall. The moment l stepped out of the van l loved the place. I knew then that I wanted to live here."
As soon as Matthews graduated she decamped to Penzance, taking a job in desktop publishing with a company known as Garbo Systems. But if Matthews had already bucked her family’s expectations ”l was from a council estate, and the last thing my mother thought was that I’d go to university and study art” she further confounded them by becoming a surfer. ”I discovered surfing almost as soon as I’d settled in Penzance,” she says. "I loved it - the lifestyle, the sense of freedom, the beauty of it. Paddling out and sitting in the line-up, looking out to the horizon, seeing dolphins - it’s just a wonderful thing to do.”
During this period Matthews met and married Jonty Henshall, a surfer who, like Matthews, had graduated from Exeter and moved to Cornwall. The pair had a daughter, Emily, and though they would later separate still get on well. And somehow, alongside surfing, working and having a baby, Matthews found time to do what she’s become celebrated for: paint.
"I think it was a compulsion,” she admits. ”l was so immersed in the sea and surfing, and had loved art since I was a child. The forms and colours of rockpools, shells, rocks and waves played in my mind, likewise a sense of pathways and horizons. I couldn’t resist painting what I saw, but in an abstract way, to bring across the feelings these things evoked more than literally represent them.”
Soon enough, having moved to Cornwall in 1988, Matthews had a number of successful shows under her belt. "I was lucky - various galleries liked what I was doing,” she says. They included the much-respected, sadly defunct Rainyday Gallery in Penzance, the Great Atlantic in St Just and the Avalon Gallery in Marazion.
By the time Emily was at primary school, Matthews was working full-time as an artist. She would go on to exhibit as far afield as Nantucket and New York, and her work has been acquired by numerous private collectors as well as the Cardiff Bay Arts Trust, Ove Arup and Partners and BBC Wales, to name but a few. It’s easy to see why her mixed media paintings, which are also shown at Clifton Contemporary in Bristol and Thompson’s Gallery Aldeburgh, are so popular. They’re bright, vibrant, suffused with colour and overflowing with a sense of joy and optimism, for as Matthews has said: ”I love spotting the first signs of the changing seasons, the first bluebell, my first summer beach day... I focus on my favourite events the first green shoots of new life in spring, or the return of fresh light after long and dark winter evenings, or the time spent watching new life in summer rockpools.”
This summer, though, Matthews explores new territory with In Bloom. ”I’d often see the sign for the National Dahlia Collection at Varfell Farm, located just outside Penzance with St Michael’s Mount in view, and one day decided to visit,” she explains. ”I couldn’t believe what I found. Dahlias are such extraordinary flowers, so mathematically intricate and perfect. I found myself in a field filled with every colour and form of flower you could imagine. I felt so inspired, and then the idea came to me to use the flowers as the basis for a new body of work.” Matthews has happened upon what is arguably west Cornwall’s bestskept secret. The National Dahlia Collection has had its home at Varfell Farm since 1998. The two acre display farm is owned by Greenyard Flowers UK Ltd, and hosts more than 1,600 varieties of dahiia. The farm’s stunning flowers are exhibited regularly at the Chelsea Flower Show, where, in 2009, they won not only a Gold Medal but also the coveted President’s Award for the best display in the Grand Pavilion.
Since her first visit Matthews has returned many times, sketchbook and camera in hand. She pays tribute to Louise Danks and Gilies Duprez, the production managers at the National Dahlia Collection: ”They were so helpful and accommodating. As the idea developed for in Bloom, they couldn’t have been more supportive.”
And so to in Bloom, the latest in a long line of collaborations between Maggie Matthews and Cornwall Contemporary. The must-see show, a celebration of what Matthews found at the National Dahlia Collection, opens on June 6. She says ”it’s taken my work in a different direction, and been a pleasure from start to finish” and, ever generous, she urges people to go to Varfell Farm to see the flowers for themselves. ”Go in the summer months,” says Matthews. ”You won’t be disappointed.”
l’d say the same for visitors to Cornwall Contemporary in June.
In Bloom by Maggie Matthews shows at Cornwall Contemporary, 7 Parade Street, Penzance, TRI8 4BU from June 6 to 30.
Words by Alex Wade.
Photographs by Mike Newman.
Photographs by Emily Henshall
