Dr Bren Unwin first came to West Penwith in the 1960s and now lives and works in St Just, Cornwall and Welwyn, Herts. She has a PhD in practice-based art research and her work is held in both private and public collections. She is a member of the Newlyn Society of Artists and a council member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. She has won various awards including The Fenton Arts Trust Prize in 2009,The Chancellor’s Medal for outstanding doctoral research by the University of Hertfordshire in 2008 and The Gwen May Award from The Royal Society of Painter -Printmakers in 2004.

In this body of work, Bren Unwin develops her interest in how we experience a landscape and considers ways in which such an experience might be articulated within visual art practice. Incorporating a wide variety of printmaking media and techniques, together with pure pigments, the artwork reveals some of the relationships that exist between a viewer and their environment. Thus materials, actions and ideas are explored in association with the dynamic and mediated character of experience. Bren’s dog, a whippet called Lesley, has a starring role in the work and locations close to Bren’s home in St Just, such as the Botallack arsenic labyrinth, place the work firmly in West Penwith. A redundant tin miners’ cage from Geevor tin mine has also become a familiar feature in Unwin’s artwork and this theme is developed in Dog in the Attic