This body of work is an act of elemental collaboration. Shelley Anderson, master craftsman and sculptor, draws from the land and sea of Newlyn not just as subject, but as co-creator. His approach to bronze is grounded in precision and instinct, in years of honed skill passed through fire, metal, and hand. Traditional tools, hammer, flame, stake, initiate the form, but then nature continues the work.

Patinas are not applied, but grown through chemical reaction, exposure, and time. Bronze becomes a surface for the weather to speak. Salt, moisture, and coastal air are allowed to interfere. The results are unpredictable, echoing the way coastlines shift, metals corrode, and memory distorts.

Salt & Scar explores how place imprints itself, not only in the mind, but on the body of the work. These pieces don’t depict Newlyn; they are shaped by it. The folds of metal follow the curves of the land. The oxidised tones echo the palette of the sea. What emerges are sculptural memories, layered, raw, and alive.

Shelley’s process is both deliberate and surrendering. There is the mastery of form—and the humility to let go. The studio becomes an open system, like the harbour itself, restless, reactive, ever-shifting.

At its heart, this work asks: how do you hold on to a place that’s always moving? Through tradition and transformation, Shelley captures the tension between permanence and erosion—between what is built and what is weathered away.