Paint from Cornwall
Aren’t these ceramics lovely?
The artist Kirstie van Noort visited Cornwall, taking inspiration from the county’s three major industries from the last century – copper mining, tin mining and the china clay pits. From these she created over 100 paint colours.
She also took photographs, and these are really what I’m posting here today. The places in these photographs are familiar to me, but look totally alien in this wonderful pictures.
For the most part the industries, which brought jobs and spurred technical innovation in the county, are all but gone. Their marks on the landscape remain however. You still see the china clay pits as your drive out of Cornwall. As a child I played on the discarded heaps of shale next to old mine buildings and hid inside crumbling red brick chimneys. I went swimming at a beach near where the photograph above was taken, and the sea was red from copper desposits. Nice then to see the mineral make-up and industrial past of Cornwall not just recorded but repurposed by an artist from far away. Read more about Kirstie’s trip to Cornwall here.
Pleased to see that you can take the Cornish maid out of Cornwall but you can’t take the Cornish maid out of the London gal. The photographs and the ceramics are lovely.
What about the pasty. A forth “industry” that still is in full flow.
Good point – a true 21st Century export success story. Makes me want a pasty… x