Lewington: Mother and Daughter. An Exhibition.

We’re really excited to announce the opening of our latest exhibition: ‘Lewington: Mother and Daughter’ which officially opens tomorrow but with a Private View later today (Sunday 8th September).

As a mother and daughter partnership ourselves at Tamarisk Gallery, it is really wonderful to be able to promote the work of the very talented mother and daughter duo, Sue and Leah Lewington. 

As well as her usual silver and gold jewellery with precious and semi-precious stones, Leah has made some fabulous copper boxes with beautiful Scilly scenes painstakingly created in them. These have been inspired by her sketches and are displayed together with some wonderful postcard-style, Scilly-scene pendants with handmade silver chains. 

Sue on the other hand, well known across Scilly for her iconic watercolour and pen and ink sketches, has created some island-inspired watercolours and some larger mixed media paintings with a looser style. 

Although both Sue and Leah Lewington now live just across the water in Penwith, Sue spent many years living and working on St Martin’s and will always hold a piece of Scilly in her heart. Sue and Leah came across to the islands at Easter to be inspired (by what turned out to be a fairly wet and wild time but luckily with great skies!) and create fresh work for the exhibition. 

My mother, Oriel, and Sue have always been good friends and enjoyed each others’ creativity, often offering helpful critiquing of each other’s work. When Sue was at North Farm on St Martin’s, I always remember it being a very relaxed, welcoming and creative space. When I was growing up, I have memories of being packed off with my brothers to camp in one of her fields or stay in her hay loft or visit for a day to do some printmaking and Sue was always so welcoming. She is definitely someone you would want on your side in a crisis! With our lives having different rhythms now, I don’t often see her but whenever I do, it is always a very happy time spent together. She is humble, fun and gives the best life advice. I was reminded of this again yesterday when we spent a wonderful day together hanging her work and arranging Leah’s jewellery. It seems that many of you feel similarly about her from the comments I have received on Facebook; ‘helpful, ‘patient’ and ‘a really lovely lady’ are some of the comments I have read and I couldn’t agree more. 

There has been a huge upset amongst regular visitors to Scilly who have told us that they purchase a Sue Lewington calendar every year and have been devastated to hear that she has not created one this year! However, Sue has reassured us all that (mostly due to peer pressure), she will make one next year, ready for 2026! 

If you happen to be on Scilly, the gallery will be open between 3.30pm and 5pm today where Sue will be in attendance and answering questions about her work and what inspires her. There will also be drinks and nibbles and a hearty welcome - we’d love to see you there! If you can’t make it, some of Sue and Leah’s work will be online later in the week. Our popular ‘Scilly Notes’ journal featuring artwork by Sue Lewington is now back in stock, too and I have a feeling this will be a firm favourite this week!