“ Sarah Price described her 2023 Chelsea Garden as inspired by ‘the ghost of a garden’. This ghost was Benton End, the former home of Arthur Lett-Haines and Cedric Morris and the site of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing. The art school was famous for turning out some of the 20th century’s best artists including Lucian Freud and Maggi Hambling who in turn have taught and inspired so many artists I admire including Jelly Green and Celia Paul.
It was a real pleasure for me to paint in the Nurture Landscapes Garden and connect with the artistic history of Sarah’s inspiration. You can tell that Sarah studied art before becoming a garden and landscape designer- her sense of colour and proportion so cleverly draws a viewer in. What I particularly connected with was the negative shapes that she created. The architectural nature of her garden meant that the space around each plant from the Aeoniums to the Irises became as intriguing as the planting itself. These ghost shapes formed of a warming palette of ‘Suffolk Pink’ and ochre hues which gave the garden another depth that I wanted to translate into the paintings I made.
Cedric Morris’s work has long been an inspiration. The flattened abstraction of his pieces makes them still wonderfully contemporary today and it’s not surprising that his work is regaining a popular following in a post lockdown moment where natural spaces are treasured to a much greater extent.”
– Beatrice Hasell-McCosh“Beatrice approaches her subject with similar empathy to Cedric Morris. In the ethereal medium of watercolour, she captures both the beauty and character of the plants before her in Sarah Price’s magical garden.”
– Philip Mould, Art Dealer and Champion of Artist Plantsman Cedric Morris
Available works
About Beatrice Hasell-McCosh
Beatrice Hasell-McCosh uses natural form as the lens to explore emotional themes, identity linked to place and human connection. Drawing is vital to her practise. She uses closely observed studies made from life to make large-scale paintings back in her studio. Playing with size the focus of importance gives way from figurative representation to a flattened abstraction, with aesthetic choices relating to composition, texture and gestural use of colour taking on primary importance. Beatrice studied English and Classics at Leeds University then attended Leith School of Art, Edinburgh and The Royal Drawing School, London. She has exhibited with Blue Shop Cottage, AORA, Sotheby’s and the Soho Revue. Her first solo museum presentation curated by The Violet Hour was at the Garden Museum, London in June 2022.
www.beatricehasellmccosh.com
Instagram: @beatricehasellmccosh