Maggie O’Brien - Open Studios

Painting and ceramics in studio 10 minutes walk from St Loy’s Cove. Teas and pottery in aid of the Toby O’brien Foundation. PV 6pm Friday May 24.

I enjoy sharing my paintings, sketch books and ceramics with visitors to my granite studio. The barn adjoins our house and garden and is a short walk from the little known and exceptionally beautiful St Loy’s Cove. Visitors are welcome to leave cars in the barn and walk to the cove. The garden is pretty and with interesting planting lots of seating areas where teas in aid of the Toby O’Brien Foundation will be available.

My work is loose, semi abstract and atmospheric. It explores and celebrates the impact of light on the landscape. The impact of changing weather and seasons is more important to me than topographical accuracy and detail. I aim to communicate atmosphere and feeling and I work from a mixture of memory and imagination rather than drawings or photographs. I use both in the gathering of information and enjoy drawing for the sake of it. Visitors are welcome to explore sketch books going back 25 years.

I teach painting at the Newlyn School of Art and am represented by Livingstone St Ives and Bristol. However I do also show with other galleries in Cornwall and elsewhere in the UK and inevitably not all the paintings are sold. Sometimes they are experimental, painted for fun or are outside my usual subjects. Most of the paintings for sale are of Cornish landscape but I also do more personal, figurative work and projects concerned with social and environmental themes which I will be happy to share.

I also make ceramics. Pots, platters and curious creatures will be on sale in aid of the Toby O’Brien Foundation. We set this bursary foundation up after our son, Toby, died in 2021. Toby was a wonderful young artist who benefited greatly from doing the Newlyn School of Art mentoring course in 2018. As a result, in collaboration with the school, the foundation can support one young artist of limited means to complete the course every year and acquire the knowledge and confidence to forge a career in the arts.