Victoria Gillow - Coastal gardens and meadows

Exhibition: 04 - 21 December
12:00-18:00 Wednesday - Saturday

Private view: 07th December 17:00 - 19:00

Coastal gardens and meadows by Victoria Gillow 

Is a personal exploration into Cornwall’s land before the sea. Here we enjoy the familiar and the joy of places we know. The beauty of the valley gardens that skirt our rivers and estuaries, and the headlands- with those and trees and fields we know.
This exhibition is a celebration of these places through the seasons.

Vicki is a Cornish painter, based in Falmouth. Her art practice is intrinsically linked with growing up on the shallow shores of  Cornwall’s South Coast and the raw energy of the North, Atlantic coast where the immensity and beauty inspire my sky and seascapes.

Within all her work Vicki holds and channel her connectivity with the sea and the land we live in. Deriving inspiration and narrative from a lifetime of looking and belonging, her Cornish heritage and love of the land and sea inform how she sees and what she paints.  

Vicki has a BA in Fine Art, a PGCE in art and MA In Illustration Authorial Practice, all of which fuel her passion for enabling creativity in others, alongside her own work as an artist. she has exhibited in Cornwall and nationally and has worked extensively in community art, in community engagement in arts and art and well being- working with schools, charities, community parks, hospitals and television.  

The MA in Illustration Authorial Practice led to her illustrating and publishing a book enabling visual literacy for Falmouth Art gallery in 2013.  Her artwork continues with this strong authorial voice to this day. 

Her work, although figurative and hinged on motifs we all recognise, also embodies an emotive response to a life lived by the sea and her respect and love of the ocean, the Cornish Coast and its history.  She aims to acknowledge the comfort of places, the reverie of being completely immersed in a landscape, the familiar gardens, trees, fields, headlands and sea, which are a constant source of inspiration.

Vicki likes to work en plein air – she walks, sees and feels what is around her.  She allows herself time to stop and truly inhabit a place. Her aim is to move less and see more, to sometimes stop walking and slowly absorb her surroundings. 

Her deep affinity with the places she knows become even more profound with her unique and personal perspective that allies with truly knowing.  All she hope is that others identify with this response too, and that her paintings have captured this response in actual time, as well as in reflection, back in her studio.