James Mayhew
James is one of our newer members, and joined the Easterly Artists community to help him continue to explore new things, through encouragement and advice.
He believes that support and community expertise is so valuable for all artists who, in the end, are working in the solitary world of their own mind. James will bring the knowledge of his own practices to the group and share his journey, inspiring others to try new things and new mediums.
Firebird was painted live, on a canvas (and projected onto a screen) during a performance of Stravinsky’s music. James said “It was an extraordinary sensation to feel the music moving through me, physically, on stage, and to respond quickly, passionately, with shapes and colours. There is no time to analyse. One can only respond, and share that response with an audience. It’s an extremely difficult, intense thing, but I love it.”
A recent piece where James pushed himself to think about form rather than line, and capturing a more emotional response to a landscape, rather than striving for accuracy. There are often swans in the sky over this section of the Waveney, in Bungay. They always make James’ heart soar. Here they are flying away as Winter approaches.
An exercise in simplification for James, really breaking things down to simple shapes, and how they make him feel. He loves when the water meadows around Bungay flood, as it’s such a hauntingly beautiful, melancholic landscape.
A Lowestoft Trawler, the name means “truth”, and in the 1930s James’ grandfather Henry Leighton sailed from Lowestoft on this boat, with a team of treasure hunters. They were bound for Cocos Island, with a map by Benito of the Bloody Sword, in search of pirate treasure! History, story and locality all come together here.
An illustrative swan from James’ book, “Once Upon A Tune”. Based on Finnish Mythology and referencing the music by Jean Sibelius, which James has often used in his concerts. Such a dark story and such haunting music. Few composers captured landscapes in music so well. Sibelius really painted with sounds. The Synesthesia of colour and sound fascinates James.
Here James wanted to catch the chaos of nature. It’s a memory of a boat journey on the Waveney around Bungay, the river overgrown with weeds, the banks tangled with reeds, and the water’s edge humming with damsel flies. Dancing light, dappled, coloured shade, rich greens and flickering textures. How can you begin to capture the cacophony? The title references music by Vaughan-Williams.
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