'Reconstructing Reality' by Cath Wallace for Inside Cornwall Magazine, April Issue.

The abstract work of two very different artists is juxtaposed in Penryn

Architecture and design are the common threads that form the aesthetc of gallery owners Kim Blackbourn and Martin Jorgensen at Open Space Galleries in Penryn. It is therefore not surprising that these themes are evident in the work or background of some of the exhibitors in their gallery.

Patrick Haughton and Volker Stox are both artists who have had experience in architecture. Patrick Haughton initially trained as an architect before switching to fine art and Volker was a practising architect and designer before turning his hand to art. 

Patrick is an artist whose work begins with the natural object, whether it is stones, pieces of driftwood or sand from the beach. Everything he makes whether it is a collage, acrylic painting or construction, is done by hand. His are traditional methods used in a modernist way.

Volker Stox on the other hand paints with the tools of technology - his computer. He uses electronic versions of the conventional paint palette and brushes to draw and paint on a virtual canvas. He says: "The image is built up over a period of time, layer upon layer. It can be stretched, squeezed, shrunk, colourised, filtered, expanded and distorted. Often other images are taken from a different source, scanned up and incorporated into these art pieces. They could be details from many sources, for example, old etchings, real objects and textures."

Where these two artists do coincide is that Volker, like Patrick, has taken the land, sea and spirit of place as the theme for his work for this exhibition. Volker's studio is in Penwith, near standing stones, burrows and quoits, and is surrounded by carns and cliffs. His work shows the elements of the landscape with titles such as 'Carn Cobba' and 'Kenidjack', but he has deconstructed it via the computer. Volker recently discovered that the artist John Tunnard lived in his house from 1947 - 1953 and his work, although produced with traditional methods, is echoed in Volker's. "It must be in the granite," he says. 

Patrick's work is also deeply embedded in the Cornish and Breton landscape, whether it is the natural or built environment. His constructions have an architectural reference to plans of buildings, but his watercolours and pen drawings look very closely at elemental forms and he loves the 'paradoxical relationships between micro and macrocosm". 

This exhibition is an interesting look at two artists who create poetic pieces of reconstructed reality with their source in the natural world.