From the studio No. 37

We’ve come to the end of the year again and I’d like to wish you a Merry Christmas on this shortest day, from deepest darkest drizzly West Wales.

It is the Winter Solstice - Embrace the dark and carry the light.

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It’s been a great year in the SARAH POLAND studio, not without it’s hurdles and losses. I’ve worked hard on building a natural dyed clothing brand and am looking forward to next year - I have a few exciting projects in the pipeline, including a natural dye collaboration and plan to get out and show at various events, including the Frome Independent Market.

I’d love to see you out there somewhere.

Building my website, brand and getting the Ande Bomber ready to launch have been some highlights.

The website has lots of new pages to view - Why I Natural Dye Clothing, Why I Make Clothes In The UK, Zero Waste and Meet The Designer. I also have Archive pages of paintings and prints from over the years.

Exhibition wise it was really exciting to get in to the Royal Scottish Academy AND sell my painting (below). The VAS 100 (Visual Arts Scotland) centenary exhibition did look fantastic in the hallowed halls of the RSA.

Prosodic Chapters Of Immanent Silence.

Oak gall ink on traditional gesso on birch ply panel.

60 x 91cm.

There’s so much to do to start a business, it isn’t just make some stuff and sell it to a shop anymore! To sell online you need all sorts of things in place, a website, branding (plus a rebrand, thanks J.D. Sports!), a privacy policy, a returns policy, product pages, selling paypoint, good photography, GDPR…the list goes on…and on. Put on the spot, I can’t even remember half of it. Responsible, ethical sourcing is BIG.

As I mentioned before, the hurdle to rebrand away from SONNET by Sarah Poland, because of JD Sports’ interference, has taken up some time. I am glad to have fully embraced the change and am going with simply my name, SARAH POLAND. I now have a new logo, garment label and event sign. The website merge with my artist site will take some time, it’s tricky - trying not to over complicate it.

Any thoughts are most welcome.

Here is my new branding:

My time mentoring on the year long course at Newlyn School of Art this year was so fun, finding myself working beside old peers from my time in Cornwall was a joy and taking part in their tutors exhibition an honour.

Fashion On Earth, Bristol Cathedral with Sustainable Fashion Week UK was a blast and what a deadline to work towards! Thanks to Sustainable Studio in Cardiff and St. John’s Hall in Bath for giving me space.

Thanks too to Helen Manley-Jones at Yr Oriel in Newport, Pembrokeshire for always showing my work.

A new gallery who has taken on my Moon Drawing, photographic and oak gall work, is Tides Gallery in Swansea and their new showcase space, Tides Uplands.

Here are some glimpses from throughout the year.

Thank you for following my journey.

Wishing you a warm winter holiday filled with love and friendship.

Keep in touch, my best,

Sarah x

Inspired by 1950s coffee culture (think Beat Generation), 90s London + an inner rock chick fused with the colours of natural dyes.

Coffee bar, intimate gig + cocktail cool, with quality + sustainability at its core.

FROM THE STUDIO NO.18

From 24th July 2022 newsletter.

I seem to have skipped a month…or two…hmmm so what’s been happening?

Well, I’ve been to the Do Lectures and have taken a while to land. If you don’t know about it check out their website, it’s a festival of ideas to put it lightly. All of the talks are online.

It’s also been fantastic weather here, it’s the school holidays, so beach camps and lighting the dye-bath fire. I’ve had a little help from some cinnabar moths to harvest dye plants and hang up the dyed fabric.

I realised today that I have a few exhibition openings to tell you about, it’s a weekend of events actually. You are most welcome to attend any of the events and please do come and say hi if you do.

I entered the Beep Painting Prize, an open submission juried exhibition. Launched in 2012, BEEP (biennial exhibition of painting) is a contemporary international painting prize based in Swansea, Wales. So, nice and local. I’m really excited to get into this.

Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time was selected for the exhibition, which opens on Friday 29th July at 7pm. The Elysium Gallery bar will merge into the after party as usual.

Mysteries Unfold Outside Of Time 2022

Botanical colour on gesso on birch ply panel, 122x122cm

The Beep Painting Prize is the first exhibition opening of the Beep Painting Biennial where there will be many exhibitions Swansea wide. Saturday 30th July 7pm opens the touring exhibition Walking In Two Worlds, in which I have several pieces. This exhibition takes place at the large Volcano Theatre Gallery. (This posters date starts in June, I can only assume that it was delayed for some reason).

The third exhibition opening this weekend is the Salon De Refuse at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. It coincides with the National Eisteddfod which is a celebration of the culture and language in Wales and alternates between North and South Wales every year. I entered a large painting and photograph diptych into the National Eisteddfod and was ‘refused’ and have been accepted into the Salon De Refuses.

In case you don’t know, the Salon De Refuses is generally known as an exhibition of works rejected by the jury of the official Paris Salon. Famously Manet, Pissaro, Courbet, Whistler and many impressionists were rejected in the Salon of 1863, but the critical attention ultimately legitimized the emerging avant-garde in painting.

This opens at Aberystwyth Arts Centre on Sunday evening, July 31st at 5pm in Oriel 2.

I’ll be at Beep and Walking In Two Worlds. Hope to see you there!

STUDIO JOURNAL 8

From newsletter 27th March.

Vignette (study), 34.5 x 61cm. Botanical inks on gesso panel 2022

I’ve got some grreat news.

After a lengthy and meticulous application for an Arts Council Wales grant, I have now received an email saying that my application has been successful. Hurrah!!

The grant is to create a solo exhibition to be shown at Elysium Gallery in Swansea in 2023. It is a large space and I have lots of ideas. I plan to have two painting installations, one with 3-Dimensional work as well as individual paintings and diptychs. The grant will enable me to commission and collaborate with other creatives as well. For example, I’ll be able to get some professional photography of my work a video documenting my process and a sound commission for an installation. It is very exciting and lots of work to do.

More information about the project will be unveiled over time. The exact date is yet to be confirmed with the gallery, I really hope you will be able to come for the opening night or during opening hours of exhibition. It will of course also be documented online, for those who can’t make it.

Oak gall ink and gesso on paper.

I’ve made a start by making some small studies on gessoed paper, board and panel and although when I start working on a series I don’t look at anyone else’s work, I’m currently re-reading books ‘In Praise Of Painting’ by Ian MacKeever RA, ‘Agnes Martin’ by Frances Morris and Tiffany Bell, ‘Resistance & Persistence Selected Writings by Sean Scully. I’m thinking I’ll look out my book of Bridget Riley’s writings, she writes with such insight on her own work and of other artists’.

I’ve also been watching videos on Youtube of Brice Marden talking about his work. There’s such an incredible archive online.

Studio table

STUDIO JOURNAL 7

From 13th March 2022 newletter.

I've entered the Void.

I'm piecing scraps of paper, notes, scribbles, rushed doodles, gathered in pockets and bag, stacked in a corner of the studio table. Ideas yet to realise, to consider, to get me back into where I was, what I've been thinking but unable to attend to.

There's been a gap in my studio making….A big gap.

Peaks and troughs, ebbs and flows of one kind or another are normal within a creative practice, I've learnt to navigate these according to their nature. However, I haven't made any paintings since last July (Somewhere to live with my family became THE priority, to get into the 6 year long renovation before winter really hits.).

This feels somewhat like an confession. And it is a painting space to re-enter…hence the Void. Gulp.

I’ve been through the plans chests, deep into the drawing archive. The drawings below are a selection ranging from as far back as 2002 until 2021.

And I’ve started putting layers of gesso ground onto paper and birch ply panel, to ready for working on.

But while renovating and grasping at the void while trusting that all will keep flowing, I’ve been listening to lots of books. I Really recommend this one:

Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art, by Mary Gabriel.

It’s been a fantastic companion in the studio while I organise the space; fun and insightful.

It really is a remarkable account of life for those who became the New York School in 40’s and 50’s in the U.S., taking over from Paris as the epicentre of modern art. It’s told utterly in the context of politics, depression, war, American art tradition, the oscillating positions of women in society and the propaganda around this. It provides a much needed documentation and redressing of some of the major female Abstract Expressionists putting them in their rightful position, at the heart of the movement.

These women really led the way for where we are now and what an inspiration they are.

Studio journal 3

Souvenance

I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human functions’ ______________________________________ Diane Di Prima, _____________Beat Poet (August 6, 1934 – October 25, 2020)

And so too the painter.

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Diane Di Prima was a poet and writer of the American Beat Generation.

Back in 2002 I went to Western Canada to meet a great friend of mine, to snowboard as she finished her season and to travel together up the West coast. We stopped a night or two in Tofino, B.C. I wasn’t sure at the time why I didn’t join her on a whale watching boat trip, but I drifted into a lovely bookshop, sat on the floor to browse a shelf and came across this wonderful book. Actually, it pretty much jumped out at me.

Some years prior, on a U.S. trip, someone I met recommended Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Another great book for that time in my life and it turned out, took the same route that I did. That was my introduction to the Beat Generation and so finding this book focusing on the Women was very exciting.

They are the reason I drink coffee - Coffee And Writing Go Together.

For me, a coffee taps into this culture and also our European cafe culture, particularly of the 50’s and 60’s. I Love the B&W photographs from these era’s, the starkness, the contrasts.

One of my favourite poems ever is Rant by Diane Di Prima - it is in this book. I also discovered Jay DeFeo and her incredible work The Rose, a 2,300 lb. painting which she spent eight years making.

The Beats in turn lead me to Patti Smith, punk poet, writer, rock musician’s thoughts and writing.

So this was the reason I missed the whale watching!

Jay DeFeo working on The Rose, 1958–66,
in her Fillmore Street studio, NYC 1960. Photo: Burt Glinn.

I’ve just gotta squeeze in a favourite photo…one of British painter Sandra Blow who lived in St. Ives for many years. I love Roger Mayne’s images of the artists there. The other Michael Gaca, director of Belgrave St. Ives took of me at Carn Galva after a bush fire in 2006. It was in my 2006 exhibition at the gallery Tuath (click for catalogue).

Sandra Blow (1925-2006) in her studio 1959 by Roger Mayne (1929-2014)

Sarah Poland 2006 by Michael Gaca

Studio journal 2

Every now and then I think about my journey, how I got to here, now, where I started, what the story is.

We all have a story, one unique to us.

I always have a story behind a particular piece of work or a series.

My first exposure to abstract modern art wasn’t until I was 17. Growing up in the Highlands of Scotland there wasn’t much. I went alone to the Inverness Museum once, determined to see some art – I saw a stuffed polecat, stags head and a dusty ptarmigan among other objects. It wasn’t what I was looking for, besides, I’d seen some in the wild.

Joan Eardley - Catterline in Winter (1963)

Mum had a poster of Joan Eardley’s Catterline In WInter 1963 on the wall. I would often stare at it, be in it, feel it.

It definitely helped kindle my love of bleak Northern landscapes, coast and falling snow, besides growing up in the foothills of the Cairngorm Mountains.

It's Funny How Oak Trees Look Pink In Snow No.2 (2018)

My school history of art lessons used B&W photocopies of... the Impressionists. Paintings which I subsequently learnt are huge, are all about colour, colour harmonies, brush marks, feeling, joy. Obviously none of these qualities came across in the photocopies.

My first Real exposure to modern art was at the Tate Gallery, now Tate Britain. Again, thanks to my mum, she took me down to London on an art trip just before my school exams. And thank goodness she did, for it sparked a drive that got me into one of our countries best art schools, Edinburgh College of Art.

I remember going around the National Gallery and the Tate. I remember at the end of our day at Tate peeking through a tiny window in a door, not unlike a medieval arrow slit. Straining to see as much as possible and begging my mum to pay for me to go in - the rest of the vast gallery was free to enter but this was a temporary touring exhibition and was typically expensive.

She did. Bless her.

What I saw in 1993 was an exhibition by American painter Robert Ryman. Known as the ‘painter of white paintings’, he is one of the foremost abstract artists of his generation. The influence that this one exhibition had was so profound it still resonates deeply today.

And he predominantly used white paint and little else!

Robert Ryman - Untitled (1962)

Robert Ryman - Untitled (1965)

Robert Ryman - Classico 5 (1968)