May 2022 – Its been a while since we caught up!!!

Plein Air painting at Botallick Mines, Cornwall

Well it has been quite while since I last wrote a post, so I thought it time to get my act together and let everyone know Im still here !

Its been a really strange time over the last couple of years what with Covid, lockdowns and general disarray but the Coulden studios have been beavering away both on the studio side of things as well as building and growing Red Dog Glass Designs, my glass design business.

Exhibition wise….I feel like I have adopted St Ives as my natural home for exhibiting, not because I am showing at the Tate (tee hee) but because I feel very at home by the sea and after all St Ives is home to some of the greatest abstract artists and (generalisation..) the people that come to visit to view the art galleries ‘get’ the abstraction side of the artwork. I continue showing at the fabulous Salthouse Gallery each September to coincide with the St Ives Art & Music Festival. Im going to be there Sept 17 – 23 this year if you happen to be in the area do pop in! Its a great time to come as there’s loads going on!

I have also been invited to present a solo show in Mayfair, London in October, more about that in the next post.

Not a bad commute to work in the morning!!

I have painted a few commissions over the past year which has been fabulous and have also been developing my Bonkers series of paintings which I absolutely love!! They do rather look like I let rip on the canvas which of course I do but only after great consideration and thoughtful planning !

Bonkers VII

Having decided at the start of this year I needed to invest in feeding my creativity and book onto some painting courses, that just what I did. Its so important to nurture and challenge your creativity and approach but so easily omitted due to being too busy … so not this year!! I have just returned from an epic 3 days on the Cornish coastline painting with Paul Wadsworth a fabulous and prolific abstract landscape artist. Wow… it was inspirational, windswept, wild and absolutely brilliant. I have painted in the landscape before but not on cliff edges and with the ocean – Ive come back with a load of ideas which is great with the 2 shows booked already for this year a great start to building the new series of paintings!!

Paul Wadsworth in action!

I can’t finish this post without mentioning Red Dog Glass Design my design business that I launched 3 years ago. Ive been working really hard growing the business and getting ourselves known. We now have a team of 4 and we successfully secured investment at the end of last year to help fund marketing and further growth. We are all about transforming spaces into the extraordinary through art and have had the privilege of working in some amazing spaces. I took part in a really interesting panel discussion as part of the Creative Collaborate event hosted by the amazing Bristol Upholstery Collective .

Not sure what I was saying but it was fun!!

We also managed to get ourselves on one of the BBC interior design shows – if you blinked you may have missed it but we did get on film 3 times!!!! :O) Im happy to take that!!!! :O)

For risk of droning on Im going to pull this update to a close, I hope you are all keeping safe and well and life is Ok in the new normal! More from the studio soon and I promise it won’t be as long a gap before the next one!

Sal