Women You Should Know by Mike Newton

NSA member Mike Newton is showing his series of paintings Women You Should Know at the Borlase Smart Room in Porthmeor Studios, Back Road West, St Ives. The show runs from 28th May to 4th June from 2.00-5.00pm daily

As a project during the 2021 COVID-19 lockdown I painted 60 Oil sketches of female poets to accompany a Cento (A Collage Poem) composed of lines from their poetry. The planned exhibition in 2021 was then cancelled due to the outbreak of the Omicron variant. They are now finally going to be shown next week in St Ives, Cornwall.

Writing a cento is a kind of an extension of reading, a way to prolong the pleasure of lines and quotations as a souvenir of the reading experience. It becomes a mosaic of treasured lines that may provoke and or amuse the reader in their new context.

In this form of poetry, lines are “lifted” from other sources and “woven” together to create a new, whole poem that stands on its own. Each portrait is 25x23cm on prepared paper and is titled with the line that poet has had selected for the Cento composed by Johana C. Migdal in commemoration of women’s history month annually observed in March.

Further info and a video of the featured paintings accompanied by a reading of the poem can be found here