Cornwall Artists Index

see Frederick H BERTRAM

A London painter who exhibited four marine paintings at the RA between 1896 and 1903, whose works included A Cornish Harbour, The Turn of the Tide (1896), A Ground Swell (1899), and others.

H Besley published a series of vignettes of Cornish scenes, that were issued in booklets and used to illustrate guidebooks. They were engraved, and included tin mining scenes, towns, Land's End, and entitled Besley's Views of Cornwall (c1854).

Born in Tilbury, Essex, Noel studied art at the Central School of Arts and Crafts before completing a teaching diploma at London University.  In the early 1980s he and his wife Pam settled in West Cornwall in the village of Gulval near Penzance. By that time he had already achieved some recognition with sales at the RA Summer exhibition, and was showing at local venues in Cornwall such as the Salthouse Gallery in St Ives and other small galleries in Porthleven and Penzance. His subjects are landscapes, seascapes and abstracts.

In 1987 he embarked on managing his own gallery in Bread Street, Penzance, which operated for some years until the couple re-established their studio at a larger farm toward Land's End. Noel's work takes inspiration from the simple architectural forms of rural cottages, the sun, and the moon against backgrounds both geometric and mystical. These can be viewed on MySpace and YouTube, where their jointly performed music may also be heard.

Both Pam and Noel are avid and talented musicians. Pam is a professionally trained violinist and composer, and plays all manner of string instruments such as the Celtic harp. Noel plays a long list of instruments including the bouzouki, guitar, whistles and mandolin. Their jazz band performs locally at pubs and clubs in the West Cornwall area, and they also produces CDs of their haunting music, much of it composed by Pam. Their projects are built into suites of work that incline towards gypsy, Celtic and jazz forms.

Beusmans was born in Hampshire and moved with his parents to Cornwall, where the senior Beusmans ran a retail pottery shop.  John helped them in the business and began potting himself in the 1960s. Preparing for a career in ceramics, he studied the art of throwing at Redruth School of Art.  He sold ceramics from his parents' shop, and then set up his own Carn Pottery in 1971 at Nancledra, near Penzance, where there is still an active commercial pottery today.

In 2005 a book about the Carn Pottery and the work of John Michael Beusmans, was published, as referenced below.

Seascapes and landscapes inspired by the Lands End peninsula.

Bew studied ceramics at Camberwell School of Art (with A G Hopkins). 

Prior to arriving in St Ives he had established a pottery within a Quaker settlement in the Rhondda Valley, Wales.  At Leach pottery (1938-42), his early work focused on porcelain, with an interest in coloured glazes; his later work concentrated on earthenware.

Geoffrey Bickley creates sculptures of birds in their natural surroundings. His preferrred material is reclaimed pine. Living in St Erth, he gains inspiration for his subjects from the nearby Hayle estuary. He is represented by the Lighthouse Gallery in Penzance.

Jill Biddick started painting in the 1990s. After becoming an Adult Education tutor, teaching watercolours, she took an 'A' Level course in Art & Design. She has exhibited at Tregony Gallery on the Roseland peninsula, and at Ebenezer Gallery, Polperro.

Suzy Billing-Mountain had a business in Hemel Hempstead before moving to Cornwall in 2001. While recovering from a period of ill-health, she joined a watercolour class, moving on to explore the possibilities of mixed media.

She completed a BTEC at Saltash College and embarked on a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art at Plymouth University, which she was unable to complete due to ill-health. But she acknowledges the power of art and the its contribution towards the process of recovery, and devotes as much time as possible to the development of her art practice.

Binch's studio is based in Pendeen. For the past forty years her original, published illustrations have been inspired by Caribbean subjects, gipsy horses and the natural world. She has also written and illustrated children's books. 

The son of James Bingley, a Brushmaker.  Bingley was a widower from Wellington, Surrey, and married Elizabeth Mary Harvey, daughter of Andrew Harvey (a Fisherman) at Paul Parish Church in 1874, giving his occupation as Artist on the Marriage Certificate. (The witnesses for the wedding were Henry Pearce Glasson and Mary James.)  Wood comments that he 'painted in an attractive impressionist style.'

Etchel Binns was born at Batley, Yorkshire.  He worked as a self-employed signwriter while studying art in the Sheffield area where he belonged to several societies of artists.  It is believed that he was a founder member of the Rotherham Society of Artists.

Immediately after WWI he began to visit West Cornwall and met members of the artists' colony at Newlyn and Lamorna.  He was greatly attracted to the unspoilt fishing cove of Penberth and in 1922 bought a small plot of land on the hillside in the Penberth Valley. In 1927 he moved permanently to Cornwall and though he never had done any manual work, he designed and built a bungalow.

Sadly in 1930 he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx which required a lengthy stay in a London Nursing Home, and afterwards could only speak in a whisper. Though this curtailed his social life and interaction with fellow painters, he remained quite prolific in his work with oils, water colours and etchings. In the early 1930s until his death in 1945, he kept a studio at Porthgwarra in a disused seine loft rented from the St Aubyn Estate.  Most of his work was sold from there, though he also exhibited at the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery, Newlyn, as a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists.