three men and the sea

82 Cornwall Today

HOW THE BEAUTIFUL BRINY HAS INSPIRED THREE LOCAL ARTISTS

Words by Alex Wade, photographs by ocean-studio.com/Mike Newman

did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could

see the moonlight and the mountains.” These words, written by the American writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, encapsulate as well as any the allure of the sea – but also have a special resonance for three of Cornwall’s artists. Step forward Eric Ward and Sax Impey from St Ives, and the commanding form of Mousehole’s Tom Rickman - three men whose work and lives are intimately bound up in matters maritime.

Of the trio, Ward is the elder statesman. Born in St Ives in 1945, he is tall, tanned and robust, still, at 65, a man who exudes

physicality rather than one who acquiesces in the cliché of the artist as fey, delicate and retiring. No wonder, for Ward’s life has entailed engagement with the sea ever since, as a young man, he returned to St Ives having qualifi ed as a teacher in Derbyshire.

“I fulfi lled an ambition of my mother’s,” says Ward, of his three landlocked years at teacher training college, “but childhood in St Ives meant that my heart lay with the sea.” By his early 20s, indeed, Ward had already accrued experience as a launcher and part of the crew of St Ives’ new inshore lifeboat, but it took successive stints as a police offi cer in Cardiff and Penzance for him to commit to working on the sea, full-time. “By then I was living at Halsetown, near St Ives, with my wife Karen,” recalls Ward. “I realised the constabulary wasn’t for me, had a 30ft day boat built and returned to the sea.”

Ward fi shed out of Newlyn, St Ives or Falmouth, depending on the season, and rejoined the lifeboat as a signalman. He has a twinkle in his eye as he recalls “very happy times” fi shing

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ABOVE, FROM LEFT: ERIC WARD, SAX IMPEY AND TOM RICKMAN

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and seeing his two sons, Richard and Zachary, grow up; and he speaks with equanimity of the harsher times served up by the sea. There were a few of these, generally as a result of Ward’s increased involvement with the RNLI and the fact that he obtained a skipper’s fi shing ticket known as a ‘Second Hand Special’, enabling him to take charge of larger vessels. But perhaps curiously, it wasn’t until Ward – who became the St Ives harbour master in 1985 – forsook working on the sea that his painting began to blossom.

“Selling my last boat was a major decision,” says Ward, “but it had to be done. I was gravitating more and more to art, and with the encouragement of certain people, felt confi dent enough to make a go of it.” Ward credits Chris Insoll, artist and gallery owner of The New Gallery in Portscatho, with playing a major role in his metamorphosis, one which has seen him emerge as one of St Ives’ most notable artists - a man whose deft, alluring and impressionistic still lifes, depictions of

jazz musicians and images of boats and harbours are sold throughout the country.

If the sea was always integral to Ward’s life, for fellow St Ives artist and Porthmeor Studios’ resident Sax Impey it took longer to manifest itself. “For a long time I resisted the sea in my work,” says Penzance-born Impey, 40. The turning point came in 2005 when he completed a day skipper course in Falmouth. “One thing led very rapidly to another,” says Impey. “Shortly after completing the course I was crewing a yacht, helping deliver it to the Canary Islands.”

He did not look back. Over the past fi ve years he has undertaken numerous yacht delivery assignments around the ➔

ABOVE, FROM LEFT: ERIC WARD, SAX IMPEY AND TOM RICKMAN

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84 Cornwall Today

world, and his love of the space, time and solitude afforded by ocean-going life is as powerfully evident as a flood tide: “Being at sea is an all-encompassing experience where no two days are ever the same. Every single metre you travel is felt. You can be yourself, alone and free from the idea that communication is intrinsically worthwhile. In that sense, the sea is a place of refuge.”

A professional artist for many years, Impey’s oeuvre now explicitly embraces the sea, with charts and notebooks often overlaid by deeply meditative marine imagery. And as well as continuing to crew yachts for delivery, Impey is also a member of the St Ives Jumbo Association. “My partner, Kelly Aiken, introduced me to Jumbo sailing,” he explains of his involvement in the association which, under the direction of Jonny Nance, aims to revive the venerable Jumbo boats – so named ironically, because their diminutive size was somewhat at odds with London Zoo’s famous African elephant.

Last year, work for his sell-out Voyage exhibition at St Ives’ Millennium Gallery meant that Impey was unable to enjoy Jumbo sailing, but this summer is set to be different, as the Newport Fine Art graduate throws himself into sailing again.

Likewise, Mousehole’s Tom Rickman, an accomplished musician as well as an artist. In his guise as a double bass player, Rickman played a starring role in a band known as Captain Ahab and the Spice Traders, but despite his formidable physical presence Rickman is an eminently grounded being, defined by one very special boat as much as his art.

That boat is the Barnabas, a 40ft Cornish dipping lugger built in 1881 (see page 24). Having been fully restored by the Cornish Maritime Trust (CMT), Barnabas is a key element in Mousehole’s Sea, Salts and Sail festival. Rickman is one her qualified skippers – and even the briefest of meetings with him is enough to suggest that he is never happier than when on

aboard Barnabas, on the ocean waves.“Barnabas is hard work, but she’s a lovely boat,” says

Rickman, his eyes lighting up at the mere mention of the vessel. “She’s a reminder of how hard life used to be, but sailing her isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s rewarding in its own right – you’re engaging in something very physical. It feels good to pull on a heavy rope on an old wooden boat. There’s a beautiful simplicity about her and better yet, life on board is as far from being digital as you can get.”

Rickman first started sailing in Dorset, where he moved after growing up in London. He settled in Mousehole in 1992, and makes no bones about the effect the move had on him: “It was like a gift,” he says. Soon after his arrival in the far west of Cornwall, Rickman acquired an RYA coastal skipper’s ticket and he is a core member of the CMT, often to be seen on voyages with Barnabas. Each time he sails, he takes sketchpads and notebooks, for as he puts it: “There’s something about making a passage that sets the brain going. You’re absorbed in the activity of sailing and yet contemplative, too.”

Thematically, Rickman’s paintings chime with his experience of the sea. He often focuses on space and distance, and on what he calls “the in-between moment, when you can see light changing”. Thus there can be a brooding, sometimes sombre quality to his work, but so too a more ethereal, almost transcendental feeling. These are emotions that fishermen know well, says Rickman: “They see extraordinary skies out there at sea, free of light pollution. It’s an experience of the sublime.”

But Rickman, well versed in nautical writings by the likes of Joseph Conrad, Jonathan Raban and Hilaire Belloc, eschews overt religiosity when analysing his relationship with the sea. “Yes, there is a sense of the sublime,” he says, “but the sea is also a tabula rasa. And an indifferent one, at that.”

Nevertheless, Rickman – like Ward and Impey – would doubtless agree with the rest of Thoreau’s quote: “I do not wish to go below now.” For these artists, the sea – and the stars, and the open skies, the infinite vistas and the solace of solitude – make the oceanic feeling the profoundest of all.

information

► For more information on Eric Ward, see www.ericward.org. Ward also shows with Glynn Macey at the Fowey River Gallery, Fowey from August 14. See www.foweyrivergallery.co.uk

► For details about Sax Impey, see www.saximpey.com and www.millenniumgallery.co.uk

► Tom Rickman shows extensively in America (www.thomashenrygallery.com) but also at Gallery Tresco - www.tresco.co.uk/see/gallery. See also www.tomrickman.co.uk

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Above: work by sax impey opposiTe pAge, Top: work by eric ward boTTom: the dolly pentreath in st ives, by eric ward

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“You can be yourself at sea, alone and free from the idea that communication is worthwhile”

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Above: work by sax impey opposite pAge, top: work by eric ward bottom: the dolly pentreath in st ives, by eric ward

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