B E Y O N D S T I V E S
E X H I B I T I O N
20 / 02 /2026
Across abstraction and figuration, restraint and intensity, these artists share a common inheritance: a sensitivity to space, structure and presence shaped by Cornwall’s unique geography. Whether through hard-edged composition, tonal stillness, expressive colour or symbolic form, each work carries the imprint of coastal exposure — of land meeting sea, of verticality against openness, of identity forged at the edge.
Cornish art has often been reduced to light, sea and romantic coastline. Yet its most significant legacy lies not in depiction, but in transformation. From the mid-twentieth century onwards, Cornwall became a site where landscape was distilled into structure, space and sensation. Artists working in St Ives and beyond were not painting views — they were responding to exposure: to wind, horizon, isolation and the psychological intensity of standing at the edge of land.
The Cornish tradition is defined by reduction. Horizon becomes line. Cliff becomes plane. Sea becomes rhythm. Physical environment becomes abstract form.
This exhibition traces that lineage across generations. From the architectural abstraction of Trevor Bell and Adrian Heath, through the meditative spatial fields of Paul Feiler, to the expressive energy of Simeon Stafford and the contemporary symbolism of Gary Ray Smith, each artist engages with Cornwall not as subject, but as force.
