Margaret Mellis: A Life in Colour at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts on artrepublic.com
Exhibition running from Jul 01 2008
until Aug 31 2008
A Life in Colour is the first major exhibition of work since Mellis stopped making in 2001, aged 87, due to ill health and features over 60 paintings and sculptures. The exhibition spans Margaret Mellis’ career, from the early still-lifes to the abstract reliefs of the 1960s and the magnificent constructions made from driftwood found on the beach near her Suffolk home. Margaret Mellis was one of the St Ives group of artists in Cornwall during the 1940s. The construction Scarlet Undercurrent, Mellis’ final work, is included in the show. The exhibition reveals her life-long preoccupations: passion for colour and fascination with form. "For me, painting is way of making discoveries and of making a thing. When the areas of a painting start reacting together and yet hold together, the thing starts to live. Sometimes it gives a sort of kick" - Margaret Mellis. Margaret Mellis was born in China in 1914, of Scottish parents, before moving to Britain as a baby. Fascinated by colour as a child, her remarkable career began at just 15 years of age when she started studying at Edinburgh College of Art (1929-33). Her outstanding talent lead to her being awarded a postgraduate studio award and a coveted travelling scholarship that allowed her to travel to Paris and across Europe. From 1935-7 she held a fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art before studying at Euston Road School. In 1939 she moved to St Ives, Cornwall, with her first husband, writer and painter Adrian Stokes. As war broke out they were joined by Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo. In St Ives Ben Nicholson encouraged Margaret to experiment with collage and relief, prompting her to "think in a different way, not in colour, which was natural to me". Despite the demands of bringing up a young child and contributing to the war effort by working on their market garden, Mellis still found time to pursue her art. In 1947 Margaret Mellis married the artist Francis Davison and settled in Suffolk in 1950. Their first home in East Anglia was an isolated cottage near Diss where Margaret and her husband grew barley and kept chickens to subsist - both wishing to maximise their time working on their art. In 1976 they were forced to leave their idyllic cottage and moved to Southwold. It was after Francis’ death in 1984 that she embarked on possibly her most creative phase, her ‘constructions’, made out of driftwood found on Southwold beach. OPENING HOURS: Tue - Sat: 10.00 - 17.00, Wed: 10.00 - 20.00 Image Credit: Fisherman by Margaret Mellis 1990 / 1991, Private Collection © the artist, 2008 Photo: Andi Sapey.  |
