Sarah Brittain Mansbridge MBE

I am having a conversation with author, curator, Ambassador, Sarah Brittain Mansbridge, who has recently been awarded an MBE in the Kings’s Birthday Honours for her Services to Art and owner of Cornwall Contemporary. We are casually talking about narrative in art, and she debates the conversation surrounding concept art and narration. She explains that it may not be necessary to purposefully create narrative in an artwork, it’s not important, but it is what she is drawn to. She has been in the business for 28 years, and yet the subject of what narrative actually means and what it is can be considered a mystery, an artwork can make you feel all sorts of things. “I see people in the gallery, and sometimes, I have literally seen people have been brought to tears by a work,” she emphasises. “And I have to say that often, it does tend to be work with a narrative in it”. She mentions the artist Kristin Vestgard, “She studied at Falmouth Art School, and she actually is a Norwegian artist, and she lived in Cornwall for years, but returned to Norway to raise her daughter. “The amount of people that have really been brought to tears by the emotion in her work”.  Sarah’s looking at a painting by the artist hanging on her wall as she explains “I think I’m always drawn to narrative in work, and I’m always drawn to a kind of a dark narrative,” she emphasises. “But I also think, I’m just moved by something that’s incredibly beautiful”. She mentions the landscape artist, Neil Pinkett. “He’s captured the light hitting water at a particular moment of the day,” Sarah explains. “I don’t necessarily think it’s vital to have narrative” she tells me. “Sometimes it is just something that is incredibly beautiful, or it reminds you of a particular moment, or a memory that’s special to you,” she clarifies.

“I mean, that’s why artists have come to Cornwall for generations, because we’re surrounded by the sea on this peninsula,” Sarah describes how they have an incredible clarity of light. “That’s why artists have been here,” she explains. “I think sometimes being a landscape artist and being an artist that’s predominantly painting the sea, I think that, that’s incredibly challenging, because your subject matter is changing all of the time, the weather, the tides, the light”. She explains how she thinks it does becomes a kind of meditative subject for them, “They have to repeat it over and over again, and do it in such a way that they’re not making it seem like they’re repeating the same painting” she points out. “I think that’s a formidable part of being a painter”. She works predominantly with local artists, and raises the bar for this small part of the world on the art stage, but on the same note, the empathy for understanding an artist and the work, and what it unveils. Sarah has been running Cornwall Contemporary that she founded in Penzance 20 years ago; as we are talking about light on this Peninsula, I start to think of how many artists have populated coastal places, with unique lighting and intense tonal ranges, what came to mind, artists such as Picasso, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Chagall and Matisse, and how the sea, light, and the mountains in the South of France influenced them. Sarah reflects the same identity with the artists she works with in Cornwall, adding to her curatorial flair and influences. The understanding of art and the relationships she has built with artists and their work, and the ongoing relationship she has with her clients around the world, she refers to them all them as friends.

Sarah is the author of several books as well, which includes the book about Daphne McClure – Cornish Perspective and a book written with Paul Thompson the guitarist from The Cure and Behind the Canvas, which was her first book published in 2001, amongst others, and then she tells me “I’m writing fiction at the moment, which is pure escapism; I need something for me and I’m really loving it. I do love to write, It’s art based thriller” she clarifies. She also writes a lot for catalogues and is asked to write many forwards for art books, “But I have written a few books, yes”. In 2019, Sarah was selected as a trade ambassador by the Department of International Trade, creating strong links with Cornwall Contemporary artists within the international art market, as well as extending the gallery’s extensive worldwide list of clients. In 2025, when Sarah was awarded her MBE after 28 years of services to art. Like any accomplishment, it didn’t come easy, she explains; she learnt from her mother the hard graft of rolling up your sleeves and getting on with it. When I asked her what she considers her greatest achievement so far, she emphasised that being awarded an MBE was a pinnacle of her career. “I think certainly by outward appearances, and also personally as well, is receiving the MBA.  I mean, that has to be, of course, yeah. I mean, it was incredible,” she clarifies. “And, you know, things like that don’t happen to working class kids like me” she tells me, “So that felt very validating. I think a lot of my life, I’ve been very much striving to do the best I can, to be the best person I can; to do the best for my artists that I can,” the recognition she believes has given her the personal validation “That, okay, you are doing a good job, you know, you are” she tells me. “I think it’s by nature just to be quite hard on myself. So that has been really magical”. She continues, “But I think also, just the longevity of my relationships with my artists”. This gives her a huge amount of confirmation. “It’s hard to articulate it, but those long-standing relationships I’ve had, I feel incredibly privileged to have been able to play a part in seeing them flourish, and, you know, to be able to promote their work around the world, to sell their work to collectors around the world, to see them all thrive”.

Sarah describes her upbringing and her introduction to creativity, despite a working class back ground, her grandfather, who worked in the mines, her single mother, who raised her two daughters whilst working three jobs. “We lived in a valley next to a moor, and I was quite feral,” Sarah describes her childhood. “I just got to live outside, there was a stream running outside the door, and I would just stand in the stream and catch a trout with my bare hands”. I was quite wild,” she tells me, “My mum worked at Tesco. She was a single mum”.  However, as Sarah describes her mother, who always found time to make and create with her daughters. This is rooted in her, the work ethic and the creativity. Sarah describes her journey as she embarked on a foundation at Falmouth College and a degree course in illustration. Her career as an illustrator with an American company, illustrating children’s books. She stops me in my tracks to explain that it wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. She felt the pressures of isolation, the stress of not working for periods, and then the pressure of sudden bursts of her work on a deadline, and how this overwhelmed her. It’s this experience of working as an artist herself that enables her to empathise with artists and understand the pressure and environments that are involved. Working in a studio alone, and the pressures of finance, and the pressures of producing work on a constant basis. ” When I came to the realisation that illustrating wasn’t for me,  that’s when I started working for the Tate,” she tells me. “They did a project called The Quality of Light in St Ives”.

This seaside town on the other side of the peninsula, north of Penzance, is renowned for its unique and luminous light, coming from the Atlantic ocean, crushed golden granite, and white sand beaches. This is where her career started to take a different direction, she then began her first step as a gallery assistant, until she was a manager nine years later, and she started working for herself. She recalls the early years of running her gallery by day and waitressing at night, to keep the lights on.

As we come to the latter part of our conversation, I ask Sarah what she considers is her biggest influence in her life. She mentions her mother, “She has influenced everything I do and I lost her far too early,” she tells me. “My husband Dom, Cornwall and Art those are the greatest loves of my life,” she emphasises.  Then she describes that she has an eclectic taste in what makes her love an artwork, much like her music taste, “I feel really lucky that I have very broad taste’ Sarah explains. “It’s the same with music she clarifies. “My Spotify age is 83. Because I listen to a lot of old jazz and classical, but I also love Nick Cave and Billie Eilish,  I’ve got very eclectic, wide tastes, and I think that that has been reflected in the gallery”. Sarah emphasises that although she has a broad range of work, that is still feels cohesive, “I think, sometimes, some galleries, when they’re run by more than one person, you can see there’s kind of a disjointedness,” she explains. “But I feel very blessed to have been to have had such a wide variety of taste in literature, art and music”. Then finally, I ask Sarah, if she could have any artwork, what would it be “It’s by Matisse, a huge Matisse, I think it’s called the Red Studio” Sarah exclaims. ” I saw it in MOMA in New York and it’s just glorious . If I could run out of that museum with that under my arm, then I would.” We laugh as we imagine me assisting, driving the van.

Interview: Antoinette Haselhorst

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