Demelza Roskilly
Translucent Cornish light geometry
Demelza Roskilly is a fictional contemporary Cornish artist imagined as working between Penzance, St Ives and the north coast, translating observed weather and shoreline structure into luminous abstraction. Her practice draws on the disciplined clarity of St Ives modernism and the optical intelligence of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s landscape geometry, while remaining a distinct invented voice. Roskilly treats the coast not as scenery but as a sequence of angles, refractions and pauses: cliff faces become facets, waves become bands, and sky becomes a measured field of light.
Demelza Roskilly reduces the Cornish coast to poised, overlapping planes of light, water, cliff and sky, building images that feel both architectural and tidal. Her work is crisp and geometric, yet softened by translucent colour, so each composition appears lit from within like sea-glass held to the sun.
Inspirations
- Wilhelmina Barns-Graham’s abstract light studies
- St Ives modernist geometry
- Cornish cliff paths and Atlantic weather
- Sea-glass, tide pools and harbour reflections
- Constructivist composition and colour balance
- Modernist printmaking and gouache studies
Signature features
- Overlapping translucent geometric planes
- Crisp hard-edged triangles, arcs and trapezoids
- Visible faint graphite construction lines
- White negative space used as active light
- Prismatic bands suggesting water reflection
- Flattened cliff and sky forms without realistic detail
- Subtle matte paper grain beneath glowing colour
- Balanced asymmetrical compositions
16 works in the collection.