Artist marks ‘homecoming’ with invitation to visit studio

AN artist who has returned to the north east after almost four decades away is finding new inspiration in the hustle and bustle of farmers’ auction marts.
Sarah Nelson, who has spent the past 40 years working in the south, is currently renting a studio at Middleton Auction Mart while preparing to build a new home at Woodland.
She will be opening her studio at the mart to the public on Saturday, November 26, and Sunday, November 27, so people can see first-hand the work she is creating.
Fellow artist Anne Mason will be opening her Eggleston studio at the same time making for a great day out to the upper dale for art enthusiasts.
It is also at the mart that Ms Nelson found a new subject for her work and was pleasantly surprised by the activity surrounding mart day.
She said: “It is a farming day – all the farmers turn up, there is a community and then there’s this interaction with their sheep or cows.
“It is a performance, it is a piece of theatre, because the farmer will come in, they will speak to the auctioneer and tell them where it [their sheep] is from, tup out of somebody, ewe out of somebody, and then there is this performance in the ring.”
She has been so impressed by the mart that she has been touring round visiting other auction sites, and most recently attended the all-important Swaledale Sheep Breeders Association’s annual ram sale at Kirkby Stephen.
The mart is not, however, her first brush with agriculture and about two years ago she was invited by a farmer friend to attend a sheep shearing event in east Sussex. The artist used ink and a brush to capture the fleeting movement of the shearing process.
Ms Nelson said: “Shearing is fast – a good shearer can do it in a minute, the whole thing. The ink works well with her favoured black and white and more recently she is turning to charcoal as a medium.
She said: “I love ink and brushwork and charcoal is new really, because you don’t have to think. You can arrive somewhere and it is a very simple pick – there is nothing to mix, you don’t have to think, ‘do I add a bit of blue, or do I want to put a bit of red in?’ You just think that is an interesting bit and you make a mark. When you are drawing from life like that you get some strong marks that may not look exactly like a replica of a Swaledale, but you can kind of tell it is a Swaledale because of the horns and shape of its head.”
Arriving in Teesdale is a bit of a homecoming for the artist who grew up in Sunderland before studying theatre design at London’s Central St Martin’s School of Art and Design. Her grandmother and mother were evacuated to Romaldkirk during the Second World War, and fell in love with the village. Her grandmother took her on holidays there and her parents later retired to the village.
During her career, Ms Nelson’s work has been shown extensively in the south east and on Channel 4’s Grayson Perry’s Art Club.
This year her work Keep The Car Running was included in the Royal Academy of Art’s summer exhibition.
Ms Nelson’s open day runs from 10am to 5pm when people will be able to browse her drawings, paintings and printmaking.