Norfolk landscape artist Sally Temple lets her fingers do the talking. She is one of few professional artists in the world who use only their fingers rather than brushes to paint their canvasses.
Her coastal roots as one of five girls born and bred in Morston near Blakeney are reflected in her oil paintings of North Norfolk’s stunning wild coastline and huge skies.
But her technique, honed over 30 years, is to paint with her fingers and her nails straight on to the canvass recreating the harbours, beaches, marshes and views across Nofolk’s Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
She says she paints by feel. It is this feeling of her oil paints on her hands that captures the essence of Norfolk with its colours and tone creating her works of art.
Her paintings which are oil on board with no use of a palette knife or brush, reflect her passion for North Norfolk and it is this feeling in her fingers which do all the work.
And it is her family’s strong bonds which reignited her love for painting and almost ‘bullied’ her back into painting years after abandoning her art dreams and raising her family.
Sally is one of the Temple family which transport hundreds of visitors a year from Morston Quay to Blakeney Point to see England’s largest colony of grey seals. Her father Jimbo runs the family business Temple Seal Trips . He started as a ferryman at the age of nine, going to school just two days a week.
Her wider family – aunts and uncles, sisters and cousins – all live in Morston and Blakeney and maintain close ties.
But the person who changed Sally’s life was art teacher Mike Bishop. After school at Wells-next-the-Sea, Sally went to Norwich City College where she met A-level art teacher Mike Bishop.
One lesson changed her life. She was asked to wear a blindfold and feel contents to paint inside each of three plastic bags. One contained cold cooked spaghetti, another leaves from a tree, and the last some twigs. She and her classmates were then told to remove their blindfolds. They then had to remember their favourite sensation from the bags and use classroom materials to reflect that on paper. Everyone reacted differently.
Her response at the age of 17 - and unique to her art teacher - was to paint with her fingers. This reflected the sticky sensation of the cold spaghetti on her fingers, like mud and water. She said her fingers created the painting and that feeling is still happening today.
Sally says she paints with her fingers because it’s the easiest way for her to portray the emotion she feels about a place as there is no connection lost between her fingers and the paint.
Art teacher Mike Bishop was spellbound. He encouraged her to stick with her technique and urged her to develop her skill at art school. Further inspiration came from seeing the landscapes of English Romantic painter JMW Turner in the National Gallery in London. Sally was fascinated by his paintings and his use of colour. Unknown to Sally at the time, it turns out that Turner was another artist who sometimes painted with his fingertips. Turner became her inspiration.
Sally’s first exhibition of her work was at the age of 19, in Norfolk's Burnham Market. Every picture was sold. But family pressure suggested there was no living to be earned as an artist. Instead Sally went to Bristol University to train as a teacher for reception children with art as a specialist subject.
After working as a therapist in a home for abused children aged 6-13, Sally travelled the world exploring Australia and Canada. On her return to Norfolk and her roots she raised two children and thoughts of her painting talents were almost forgotten, although her passion for art remained. That was when her Aunty Joanie decided such passion and talent should not be wasted.
Aunty Joannie badgered Sally for a picture and finally commissioned a painting of Morston harbour so indelibly linked to life in the Temple family. She ordered two more and gave Sally money to frame them professionally so they could be exhibited in Morston Village Hall.
That was the spark which set Sally on her new career.
Now Sally exhibits in that same village hall twice a year. She has works selling in galleries all over North Norfolk and in Cambridge. Her exhibitions display 50 of her works at a time in Morston and Cley Nature Reserve. And every painting she has ever done has sold so she also creates limited editions of 75 prints.
Sally works in her studio in a large caravan three days a week completing each painting in a day from start to finish. And she enjoys every minute of the sensation, the feeling of paint on fingers and canvass. She says she can’t sit still once she has begun a work. And two days a week she keeps herself grounded with reality by working in a dress shop.
Her need to express herself through art and break down new boundaries has led to a new venture...painting in the dark. This really tests her theory of painting by using her senses such as touch, smell, sound, and noise.
Her paintings in the dark have been created inside a circus tent while watching performances of Circus Cortex .
Sally uses her easel and her paint palette with all her paints in their usual spots so she knows which colours are where. And off she goes creating a more abstract painting quite unlike her other landscape works. And she loves the new experience which was a surprise to her too when she was first commissioned. Sally enjoys her circus painting and says this is definitely one to be repeated.
To view Sally Temple's art:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/stempleartist
Instagram - sallytempleartist
Website - sallytempleartist.com
Email - sallytempleartist@icloud.com
Great story. Lovely paintings.