Mount's Bay - Benjamin Warner exhibits at the Lighthouse Gallery.

mount's bay - benjamin warner at the Lighthouse Gallery, Penzance
17th September - 1st October.

 Light captured on canvas - JMW Turner set the 19th Century art world ablaze with his daring applications of paint on canvas to render coastal scenes with that special light which fills the dawn sky - ......... 

 today, Falmouth based Benjamin Warner turns his attentions to Mount's Bay and, in particular, Newlyn in an exhibition that could have been entitled, Through the Gaps........

 with richly warm, heavily worked canvasses which successfully capture that same intensity of light which has drawn so many artists to Newlyn in the footsteps of Stanhope Forbes........

 some obviously inspired by the view across to the Mount in the minutes before the sun breaks from the horizon........

 to the warm glow of a breaking dawn where the sun picks out an individual boat (in this case David Steven's Crystal Sea II) ..........

 variations in the weather bring variations of light as this visiting yacht heads for the gaps on a more sombre morning.......

 or the Sarah Beth leaves on what promises to be a cooler day......... 

 while in one of the larger works, the crabber Girl Pamela becomes the centre of attention captured in the gaps around four thirty in the morning at the height of the summer, you can feel the heat of the impending day.......

 the layered effect is achieved by repeatedly working the canvas with heavily laden brush strokes that are then scraped back and worked again.........

 to give the deep, rich underlying tones depth........

 that intensify the lightest tones to create the illusion of those early morning scenes........

 elsewhere, turpentine has been mixed to dilute the paint and create those spurious cloud formations that gather over the Bay.........

upstairs at the gallery is a canvas capturing the view over St Ives and the bay beyond.


The show at the Lighthouse Gallery, Penzance runs until the 1st of October, many of the works on display have already been marked with a red dot - a sure sign of the popularity and recognition that Benjamin Warner's works deserve.