East Coast Open Dorothea Newman - Spread Your Wings

For obvious reasons, Scarborough Art Gallery has not held an East Coast Open since 2019. However, the current exhibition has attracted over one hundred artists. The works submitted include textiles, painting, prints, mixed media and photography. While this is not a competition, there will be a public vote to identify the most popular work. This is a profile of just one of the artists.


East Coast Open Dorothea Newman - Spread Your Wings

Mercifully, the titles that artists give to their work is veering back towards the comprehensible. It seems we are no longer to be perplexed by the likes of Equivalent VIII or Opus 11. This does not mean titles are becoming more simplistic or overt, only that they indicate a less abstract line of thought.

The title of Dorothea Newman’s remarkable work refers not only to the birds wheeling off the Yorkshire coast, but also to ideas of freedom, experiment and independence.

Dorothea’s mixed media creation is half painted sky and half cannibalised map of the East Coast. When she told me that the maps she uses have to be over fifty years old, I thought it was an homage to the past. The actual reason is far more prosaic: you have to wait fifty years for the copyright to expire.

And what fascinating use she makes of the charts. Ironically, she has cut the map into small sections and then re-assembled them into the shape of the coast that they were illustrating. It is as though a vision of the land, has been re-purposed back into the land itself. The map is dismembered, but remains coherent. But wait – the towns and villages do not have the names you expect either. Instead of Sledmere or Ayton, there are short sayings or injunctions (‘take control’, ‘this way’).

Dorothea was born in Ilkley, but grew up in Filey, the youngest in a family of three girls. When asked about her painting life, she responds with, ‘I am a happy amateur.’ Such modesty is genuine, fuelled by living a life where she kept telling herself that she was not good enough. Eventually, a friend (teacher and artist Helen Birmingham) announced that she had entered one of Dorothea’s paintings for the Hull Open at the Ferens Art Gallery. When it was accepted, Dorothea began to gain confidence, but only really started as an artist a mere eight years ago.

When asked about who had influenced her, the self-deprecation resurfaces and she claims that, because she had no formal training, her knowledge of the tradition of Western Art is limited. She will admit to an admiration for Frida Kahlo as an artist and as a woman. Dorothea first became acquainted with Kahlo’s work when she visited an exhibition in Milan and grasped how instrumental Kahlo’s art had been in forming her identity.

Her advice to a novice painter would be to commit fully, but be prepared for an arduous apprenticeship where improvements only come slowly. She agrees with me when I suggest that we are our own worst critics. In order to avoid undue harshness, keep in mind, she says, that we, ‘need to be kind to ourselves’. Above all, keep going.

Dorothea is currently working on another version of Spread Your Wings and wants to foreground the importance of sea and sky. Another project involves switching from maps to using sheet music in her mixed media work. At a more practical level, she hopes to have her own studio soon rather than working from a room in her house.

Spread Your Wings is a striking work that repays closer and closer attention. Each individual element harmonises into a coherent whole. You can almost hear those gulls calling as they wheel over the sea.