The Archipelago Fine Art via the website gallery offers an individual and very personal selection of art work in a wide range of disciplines.
The artists and makers in the gallery have been invited to take part as a result of the contacts made by the gallery’s founder and organiser over a career of thirty five years in the visual arts; the work on show is there because of its appeal to him rather than any perceived commercial viability. The values that lie at the heart of these choices are built on the tradition of the artist as maker, in sympathy with the materials and striving patiently to realise by hand his or her ideas, dreams and feelings. This does not mean that all of the work will be ultra traditional, innovation and challenge will go hand in hand with all presented to you, selected and chosen as a result of deliberation and care. You will not be presented with work on the grounds of fashion or ‘fad’ but because gallery and artist applied a strict and searching personal criteria.

So why Archipelago?
We live in an archipelago, from Shetland to Scilly and from the Farne Islands to the Blaskets we are part of a great band of islands lying off the North West coast of Europe. The diversity is not simply one of geography but of peoples, Scots, English, Welsh, Cornish, Manx, and Irish describe not just peoples but languages and tongues. Art can link us all just surely as the sea links the islands of an archipelago and it is an aim and intention at Archipelago to bring to you an art born of the experiences of living and working in our archipelago. Art is as much a child of place as the artist is and cultures give us viewpoints and thematic ways of seeing that place. Whether it is Norwegian qualities in Shetland or the Englishness of East Anglia or the Celtic nature of the western seaboard there is a rich vein of belonging that runs through our art work, lets us be proud of it and celebrate it.

Archipelago’s founder and organiser:
Jonathan who runs and organises Archipelago, has spent some thirty five years involved in the visual arts both as a practitioner and as a teacher. He is a Cornishman by background, and a passionate believer in the way ‘place’ shapes our art and the way we intrinsically sense our environment. This ‘signature’ is part of our inner landscape and we respond to it in a similar way to how we respond instinctively to ‘golden section’ proportions in classical architecture. What he is intending to find and present via Archipelago is a body of work by contemporary artists and craftspeople that has that resonance for him and hopefully for you too.