Is Purbeck the new St Ives?

Associated media

James Fenton reports on a unique arts festival in an area that has long inspired artists of all kinds

The Isle of Purbeck has long been a powerful source of inspiration for artists, musicians, performers and writers. The region lies on the south Dorset coast of England, on the south side of Poole Harbour, a World Heritage coastline rich in geological drama, wide sandy beaches and secluded coves. It boasts a wonderful quality of light that has drawn key members of the Bloomsbury set and attracted the world's leading painters and classical musicians over the past 200 years.

Today talented artists, musicians and writers avidly show and perform work at the 16-day annual cultural celebration, ‘The Purbeck Art Weeks Festival (PAW)’.

In 2012 the Festival has reached its 10th anniversary and is taking place between 26 May and 10 June. It offers an array of spectacular performing arts as well as the chance to visit over 50 artists in their studios to see exhibitions of paintings, sculptures, photographs, and a range of crafts inspired by the captivating Purbeck landscape.

This year celebrates the striking artistic talent of Sheila Girling, wife of probably Britain's finest sculptor, Sir Anthony Caro, PAW's enthusiastic Festival President. Sheila exhibits for the first time at the L'Artishe Gallery and is excited about the prospect. She said recently:

For more than 30 years we have been coming to Purbeck, where we live in a coastguard cottage high on the Purbeck cliffs. The seascape and the landscape have proved to be constant sources of inspiration in my work. When I was invited to exhibit as part of the Purbeck Art Weeks Festival it seemed fitting. It is a real pleasure to show in Swanage.

Sheila’s work can be found in private collections in Spain, Germany, Canada and Windsor Castle and she has been a regular exhibitor at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Encouraging the next generation to engage with art is central to the vision of the PAW Festival. The event celebrates young talent and a major part is the active involvement of Purbeck's Young Artists. This unites 12 schools across the region, helping 500 Purbeck schoolchildren develop artistic expression and exhibit their work at Rollington Barn. As Sir Anthony says: ‘PAW encourages young people to be adventurous and stimulates and informs an ever-growing national and regional audience drawn to the region’. The theme this year is the Carnival of the Animals, inspired by the evocative musical suite written by French composer, Camille Saint-Saëns.

The Festival has also attracted long-term support from international cellist Natalie Clein, who grew up nearby and will be performing in Purbeck with friends in September. Other stars taking part in May and June include the world-renowned Gabrieli Consort & Players, who perform Handel's English Pastoral Acis and Galatea and a Handel Oboe Concerto, while the lyrical Brahms Horn Trio is performed by international philharmonic musicians Miranda Fulleylove, Fergus McWilliam and Huw Watkins. Meanwhile Radio Three's ‘Early Music Show’ presenter Lucie Skeaping joins fellow RSC artist Martin Best and friends for a show based on Shakespeare's The Music of the Spheres. Later in the Festival, rising stars the Sacconi Quartet perform a rousing programme featuring Mozart, Beethoven and Bartók.

A wide range of talks and workshops include those given by Melvyn Bragg and Oscar-winning composer Stephen Warbeck (Billy Elliot, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Shakespeare in Love) as well as one on Dorset artist Fra Newberry (who was head of the Glasgow School of Art when Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a student there).

By contrast Elvis McGonagall will lead the annual Festival poetry slam where budding poets help Festival-goers let their hair down. There is also a Festival Fringe featuring live bands, plays and other performances that take place in local pubs and on the beach at Swanage.

Some of the local artists will give talks and lead workshops at the Festival’s main exhibition area, the character-laden barn at Rollington, found between Corfe Castle and Studland. Visitors are invited to take part in hands-on clay workshops, engage with egg-tempera paintingto recreate ancient frescos and icons, or carve wood with foot trestle lathes. 

With such a range of talent on display Purbeck is rapidly becoming the new St Ives.

The region is a timeless landscape of ever-changing colours. In the early 1930s Virginia Woolf, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey and others were mesmerized by the serene beauty of Studland Bay (in the north east of Purbeck). They were soon followed by talented painters such as Augustus John, Paul Nash, Graham Sutherland, Mark Gertler and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In fact Paul Nash, the Surrealist painter, was so drawn to the region, he considered moving long-term to Purbeck. He thought Swanage, which lies on the east side of Purbeck, the most surreal town in England.

Writers are just as plentiful. From Thomas Hardy to Enid Blyton the landscape has inspired creative writing. Hartland Moor became Egdon Heath in Hardy's novels. Ian Fleming went to school in the Isle of Purbeck and found his James Bond character in the local Bond family, whose motto 'the world is not enough' resonated greatly. Corfe was transformed as Kirren Castle in the Blyton books. Percy E. Westerman wrote his novels on an old Thames barge moored on the River Frome near Ridge.

Today a similar creative zest reverberates around the region, with the light and scenery attracting artists to a region that reflects an earlier age, and where time is revealed in the Jurassic rocks and coastline.