Blue Note – Unique Monotype

Internal Landscapes

Internal Landscapes, an exhibition by Sally Cole at the Conquest Hospital: Roz Cran wanders through outer and inner landscapes in the Corridor Gallery on Level 3 Outpatients Department.

‘Lazy Wind’ is the name of the first print that I see. A lazy wind is ‘a wind that goes straight through you, too lazy to go round’. A Welsh farmer told Sally Cole this when she was on her way to Pembrokeshire. Pembrokeshire, New Zealand and Sussex provide the landscapes that Sally draws, paints and prints.

Lazy Wind – Unique Monotype

I look carefully at ‘Lazy Wind’, a ‘unique’ monotype. I like the colours – grey, black, putty; and the marks – brushed, rolled, drawn; and the shapes showing through the layers. There is a lot of movement on the paper, spatter and spit, waves and arrows, but to me it is a quiet print, a quiet wind. There are a number of monotypes and these are the pieces that I am drawn to.

‘Rainfall’, another monotype is dark, but there is room to see. Am I in a cave looking out? Waiting for Plato’s shadows to pass by?

Kent Spring – Oil on Canvas

There are paintings too. ‘Kent Spring’, oil on canvas, lime green and grey brown, a small contained painting, attracts my eye. Sally says she saw rapeseed fields on the way home one day. Next to it ‘Chalk Downs’ greys and whites, painted at Firle in Sussex.

Sally visits New Zealand regularly and has produced some large oils. Cliff Edge, a New Zealand drawing, is intriguing, the coloured inks, apricot, blue, fall downwards.

The exhibition consists of 35 pieces in this long corridor gallery. When I visit the show, many people pass up and down this space, going to appointments, visiting relatives, going about their work. Most simply pass by, engaged in their tasks, others glance at the art, and some stop and look carefully at the work. This is a public space open to all, many of whom may not visit art galleries; a place for anyone to see these landscapes.

Sally works in the landscape in all weathers. She carries her equipment, clambers over fields or cliffs, and finds a place to sit quietly, drawing, painting and sometimes even making a print outdoors ready for the press. Then she retreats to her studio and uses her experiences to work up these inky prints or paintings in oil or pastel.

Internal Landscape 2 – Pen, Ink and Graphite

I wander along these landscapes and arrive at a set of 6, internal landscapes. These pen, ink and graphite drawings are different. They were made last Autumn. Sally had undergone treatment for cancer and did not feel strong enough to venture outdoors to draw. She went to the studio, put on some music, and began to respond to the feelings within. You get a sense of inner processes, liquids roaming round the body, blood, sweat, tears, gurgling, the stuff of life. Sally said she produced these drawings slowly and that she found making these pieces ‘cathartic and restorative’. She felt it important to share these pieces with people in a hospital who may have had similar experiences.

I continue to look at more outer landscapes. Three more monotypes: ‘Blue Note’, inspired by a visit to Dungeness, is very blue, lots of movement, two sides to it. ‘Between Land’, a spattered space, a rhythm, music even. ‘Grasses’, that dun colour again, rolled on. Sally says she is most excited when she is challenged by the landscape.

Night Vision – Unique Monotype

Peter Lanyon, Paul Cezanne, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham are painters who have interested and influenced Sally. She has been travelling a lot this year and has ideas for a new body of work based on mountains.

The Sally Cole Exhibition is at the Conquest Hospital Level 3, Outpatients Corridor, The Ridge, St. Leonards on Sea, TN37 7RD, and continues until 14 November 2016

Sally Cole’s website.

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