Sketches and studies painted on strips of coarse canvas once used for wallpaper now adorn the walls of Vicki's studio. Her own paintings hang on another wall as unobtrusively as possible as though not to damage the fabric of the building where some of Newlyn School of Art masters once painted and lived. "I'm treating the building like it's listed," Vicki said.
"I've pinned the paintings through the holes that were already there and I've used the holes already in the walls. "When we moved in we discovered 100 years of graffiti on the door and sketches and portrait studies painted on the walls. The floor was rotting away and dangerous.
We had to do some work to make it safe. It was during that work that we found that whitewashed strips of canvas had been used as wallpaper on the wall." "We didn't know what they were but when we took the canvas strips off we discovered that some of them had paintings and drawings on the back," she continues.
"That's when we realised that the whole wall had been used for studies and sketches and the canvas had then been turned over by later owners and used as wallpaper." Vicki Norman and her partner Mark Branigan moved into Gwavas House (it means winter home in Cornish) on Fore Street, which overlooks Newlyn harbour and Mount's Bay, two years ago. For the 45-year-old internationally renowned artist, it was like a lifelong dream come true - like unearthing a time capsule and retracing the steps of the Newlyn School's founders Walter Langley, Thoma.