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Born and bred in St Just, landscape
painter Neil Pinkett lives up to the title of his solo show, A Personal
Perspective.
The show, being held in Cornwall Contemporary, Penzance,
includes 30 or so drawings of his family and friends, plus places he
has visited. From Sketching Kurt Sketching to Hot Hot Hot Night After
Rain, from Afternoon Sun, Barcelona to Les Arc, South of France,, they
offer revealing glimpses of his more private life while demonstrating
that he can certainly draw and is as confident and comfortable with
pencil in hand as he is with paintbrush.
One
for whom drawing and painting each day is as natural and as essential
as breathing, Neil is now based in Newlyn where his studio is less than
a fishing boat's length from its busy harbour. Not surprisingly,
several of his oils on board, from Grey Boats to Grey Newlyn, have
sprung directly from what he has seen and experienced when going to and
coming from his studio.An en plein air artist, he spends as much,
possibly more, time outside his studio as he does inside it and is
proud that his penchant for painting in situ has earned him the respect
of the fishermen who work in and out of Newlyn.
Whether perched
on one of the piers there, or on a cliff-edge at Botallack, his love of
the great outdoors lends his work an immediacy which is immensely
appealing.
Innovative and an all-action man, Neil Pinkett constantly surprises. It
will be remembered that two years ago he completed a 1,000-mile cycle
journey from Cape Wrath to Cape Cornwall "drawing and painting as he
pedalled".
He
is now planning something similar for later this year in Ireland, but
paddling instead of pedalling in a specially-adapted canoe the length
of that country's longest river.
Talking of surprise, all 75 of the works in this exhibition are hung unframed and are all the better for it.
This is how one would see them in the artist's studio without the confines of a frame coming between viewer and the work.
It
is a state of undress, almost nudity, as it were, which emphasises the
intensity of the artist's passionate approach and total commitment to
his art.
From land to seascapes, from figure to still life
studies, Neil Pinkett's 'perspective' is not only 'personal', but also
embraces a sense of place and of the people who live and work there,
which is as powerful as it is pungent, as pleasing as it is potent.
A
Personal Perspective is on view in Cornwall Contemporary, 1 Parade
Street, Queen's Square, Penzance, from 10am to 5pm Monday to Saturday,
until March 24. Admission is free.
article copyright THE CORNISHMAN
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