CULTURE

art/

School 1 How do you do teach art? Do you show or tell? “Neither,” says Faye Dobinson holiday between life-drawing classes. “You teach people to look.” Dobinson’s mock horror Learning to paint is at the thought of a heavy-handed approach surely a life-improving and a right and wrong way to paint (and skill? We head to to teach it) have got her not-so-young charges looking – and looking well. southwest England in On a fresh Wednesday in May, clean search of good light Cornish sunbeams stream through and a fresh mental Palladian windows into the school’s landscape. main classroom. Pupils sketch their way out of their pre-class tightness, let their By Robert Bound hair down and relax into the painting Photography Joel Redman day. Sheets of thick paper are laid on paint-spattered floorboards, charcoals and crayons are taped to bamboo canes and our model stretches away her own morning stiffness, shaking her locks out of a ponytail. The marks are scratchy and 2 no105 — monocle — 141 art/ cornwall

Previous page: (1) Tools of the trade (2) Faye Dobinson and our model This spread: (1) Sasha and Henry Garfit 2( ) in May (3) Photography class on the beach (4) The results (5) Taking aim (6) New light through old windows (7) Sketching but not sketchy 3 imprecise and, according to Dobinson, the exercise is “all about taking away that last vestige of control, to allow people to relax enough to see”. The results aren’t meant to be results and will be thrown in the bin but they’re striking; a triptych of accidental abstract expressionism. Then 4 off come the clothes, up go the easels and out comes the paint. Watching art happen is mesmerising. The Newlyn School of Art is named after its town, a bold little promontory west of that clings to the cliffs. It is more stoic than chocolate-box and 1 5 works in fishing (a bit), tourism (quite a “People love the scenery and bit) and art (a lot). The school was set up gardens but they’ll also paint in 2011 by Henry Garfit, an art-school- broken nets. I hope I teach trained former auction-house man who wanted to come to the source of a lot of people to keep their eyes open the art that he loved: Cornwall. “We’re for any old rubbish” lucky to have such dramatic landscapes and to always have had such a pool of The most scenic Scilly is Tresco and the talent here,” he says of the western-most Newlyn School will take you and your bit of the UK where Ben Nicholson and paintbrushes there for a few days of Barbara Hepworth came in the early relaxing tutelage with Amanda Hoskin, a and mid-20th century and founded the St Cornish artist and a master of landscapes. Ives School. Board an eight-seater prop-plane from That town up the road is famous, has a Land’s End Airport for the 15-minute Tate gallery and is a traffic jam of smocks, hop to St Mary’s then sling your easel in berets and clattering easels. There was also a boat for the transfer to New Grimsby, a Newlyn School, founded around the Tresco’s scenic little port. Next it’s a trac- earlier work of . Really, tor for your bags and a golf cart for your Newlyn’s the original Cornish art town. legs if the island’s square mile of fields, And Garfit’s school is a triple whammy: beaches and sandy tracks are too much it’s an art school, a style of work and the for your artistic temperament. Then sea 6 building itself was a primary school, built breeze, gulls on the wing calling across the with local granite, in 1878. Enough. Let’s bay and silence. It feels painterly. go painting. It sounds churlish but Tresco is so pointedly picturesque that it runs Now, you can paint anywhere. You can do the risk of everyone painting the same a Turner in a car park if you use your head lovely nature, like photographing the but really you come to this part of the Eiffel Tower. Why bother? “Oh no,” says world for the landscape. Cornwall’s got Hoskin, finishing with her beachcombing picturesque villages such as Mousehole class of outdoor watercolourists. “People (pronounced “mauwzul”), drama at the love the scenery and the gardens but Bedruthan Steps (like an Old Testament they’ll also paint broken nets and the boat illustration) and wild beauty in the Isles sheds. I hope I teach people to keep their of Scilly. eyes open for any old rubbish.” 2 7 142 — monocle — no105 no105 — monocle — 143 art/ cornwall

(1) Boat to Tresco (2) Crayons (3) Painting teacher Amanda Hoskin (4) Every picture tells a story (5) Caspar David Friedrich eat your Hoskin’s hiding her light under a scenic heart out (6) Hop to first mark on a piece of paper”, and stu- bushel: her students are turning out con- Tresco in 15 minutes dents ask good, straightforward questions fident work, finding shades of grey and quickly and with a certain confidence green and blue in the sea and beginning dressed up in coy clothing. “How do I to build an impression of a landscape give it depth without making it dark?”; rather than slavishly sticking to every puff “How can I make her look friendly with- of cloud and every whinnying white horse out painting a smile?” And the Cartesian: in the surf. But Wendy’s got stuck and her “The sea isn’t still but my painting is.” painting isn’t balanced. “I’m happy but I On the beaches, in the gardens, on wish that island wasn’t there,” she says. the clifftops and in and around the school Quick as a flash, Hoskin says with a smile: itself people talk about what they’re “Well, it’s a painting, move the island.” doing, how they’re doing it, compliment Sage advice, Hoskin. good work, offer advice and make each This is a bite of the wisdom and holi- 1 4 other tea – it’s collegiate. When people day humour of the 30-odd tutors at The go to the pub in the evening it’s all beer Newlyn School of Art. The day before, and bonhomie but school hours pos- Garfit had said that he’d founded the place sess the low, rich hum of industry and “with the desire for artists to share their improvement. If only the art school ran practice and their process”, which is no the country. homily: it’s the thing. There’s nothing from So what do the artists get out of it? a book or a blackboard or an “In 1896...” Well, art is a fickle breadwinner and for in sight. It’s all about artists telling other most of the artist-tutors the fact that artists how they make their work: tips are their often vital second job is teaching practical and aesthetic, advice is physical other people to do what they do is not and philosophical, and there is something only profitable and sane but can have the of communicating the habit of art. useful side-effect of making them better In three days dabblers can go from artists too. “I haven’t stopped learning sketching mice to painting lions. Artists 5 from doing this,” says Dobinson. “So with an existing practice, semi-professionals often, explaining how you do something or good old Sunday painters can hone, “So often makes you do it better next time. It’s like polish and look at their work in a differ- explaining therapy or something.” So much of art is ent light. Watching brushstrokes become how you do in the head, so letting it out of your mouth a picture is rewarding. It’s satisfying to something can feel very good. watch learning. The next morning is a pea-souper on makes you do the island and a test for the imaginations What do people talk about when they’re it better next and colour palettes of our budding artists. painting? What questions do they ask? It’s time. It’s like There may be a lot of greys and whites not like getting your hair cut; there’s not therapy” and pale blues and greens. But maybe a lot of “Going anywhere nice on your not – these are artists not reporters, after holidays?” Faye Dobinson talked about all. Is there not an ochre in the mist? We “bringing out the confidence to make that leave the artists to immortalise Tresco’s

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Back to school terraces amid lush and colourful (1) Focus (2) Life drawing warm-up Where we’d go to brush up our skills gardens and fruit trees,” says Kate (3) Artist Mark Jenkin (4) Even the easels Tuffrey, who joined the Skyros are a work of art (5) High and dry Aside from our picturesque team last year. “We offer more (6) Tutor Faye Dobinson painting course in Cornwall, there’s than 70 courses with professional a world of self-improvement classes facilitators and more than half of out there that aim to be a little our participants return time and more seductive than an evening time again.” course under fluorescent lights skyros.com Abbey Garden, a semi-tropical Gulf in an adult-education centre. We Stream marvel. Silence settles over the round up our pick of those that art appreciation/cookery sketchbooks and another day of making offer extra strings to the bow, Villa Lena the actual impressionistic begins. blue skies and – if at all possible – Italy quality of life guaranteed, all while The Villa Lena Agriturismo Back in Newlyn, which now seems like conducted at a leisurely pace and and Art Foundation in Tuscany Manhattan after the silent wilds of the with on eye on the approach of offers a different kind of learning Scillies, we visit the artists who take stu- 1 cocktail hour. experience. Here, in a converted dios in the school. Jessica Cooper, Sarah farmhouse dating from the late Ball and Mark Jenkin are two painters food/photography 19th century, artists and chefs- Grantourismotravels in-residence teach daily art and and a film-maker, respectively, who inject Southeast Asia cookery workshops. The idea an extra dynamism into proceedings. Grantourismotravels, founded by behind the Tuscan villa, which was Cooper’s abstractions of the natural travel writer and photographer duo named after art consultant and take her to Los Angeles often enough for Lara Dunston and Terence Carter, co-founder Lena Evstafieva, was Newlyn to be a relief from the city. Ball’s organises learning holidays and to unite music, art, entertainment, bespoke culinary tours, as well as film and fashion in one place. portraits – she has done refugees and is travel writing and photography trips Holidays here can be spent working on a series about concentration- to Cambodia and Vietnam. acquiring new art skills, exploring camp guards – are far from the flora and “I’ve crafted itineraries for the neighbouring towns of Lucca, fauna of the West Country. Jenkin makes some of the world’s best chefs and San Gimignano, Siena and films of walks inspired by psychogeogra- restaurateurs, cookbook writers Florence or learning to make fresh phy. About this, he says: “I showed my and restaurant critics, as well as pasta and forage for truffles. 4 travellers for whom discovering a villa-lena.it dad around the studio and he said he country’s cuisine and culture is a felt strange being here. I asked him why way into its heart and soul,” says language and the arts and he said, ‘Well, I went to this school Dunston. She’s contributed to GoLearnTo and this was the girls’ half, which I wasn’t publications such as The Guardian Worldwide allowed in, and it still feels like I shouldn’t and Condé Nast Traveler China and This London-based learning is currently working on a cookbook holiday agency, founded by Vanessa be.’” So many thoughts are thought under about Cambodia’s culinary and Lenssen in 2006, offers a series of this roof. It is a school, after all. architectural heritage – both of holiday packages designed to help The Newlyn School of Art does much 2 which are at risk. travellers learn a language or new for Newlyn and everywhere Garfit goes, grantourismotravels.com skill – from cooking to surfing or he’s known. Of course hoteliers, publi- painting – while discovering one of arts 29 destinations, such as Argentina, cans and people who run b&bs like that Skyros China or Australia. Its language the school brings in dozens of hungry, Greece & UK courses pair travellers with a tutor, thirsty artists who need a bed but there’s Skyros, which has been around which makes for an immersive also a certain civility and rarefied vibe that for 38 years, was Europe’s first learning experience. goes with an art school. 5 course-based holiday centre. With Besides French, German, As Garfit and his wife Sasha help with locations in Greece and the Isle Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, of Wight, it offers a number of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, washing brushes and administering to courses specialising in everything Finnish, Italian and Arabic classes, the little empire of studio space, artists’ from writing to art, music, theatre, GoLearnTo offers photography, shows and the school itself, a hush finally dance, windsurfing and yoga. Its art, dance, music, perfume-making, descends within those old granite walls. Writers’ Lab, regularly held in the scuba-diving, surfing, sailing and “It’s how I imagined it,” says Henry. “I hillside village of Skyros, has been culinary holidays. According to taught by Booker and Pulitzer Lenssen, what GoLearnTo can wanted it to feel like this.” And all the prize winners such as Hilary provide “is an antidote to the way hard work? “Well, you know it’s been Mantel and James Kelman and our lives are at the moment – a good week if you have to repaint the has inspired critically acclaimed you’re always connected to your ceiling.” It seems that even the building authors including Susan Elderkin phone or your iPad, and you don’t sleeps contentedly at night having given and Emma Darwin. “In Atsitsa on really switch off when you’re on succour to so many minds all day. Move Skyros, activities and courses are holiday anymore”. — mss held outdoors on beautiful stone golearnto.com the island indeed. — (m) 3 6 146 — monocle — no105 no105 — monocle — 147