Christine Rodger has spent decades charting the coastline of western Britain – first from the deck of a small cruiser, sketchbook in hand, and now from her home on the Fylde Coast. As her new exhibition, The Coastal Theatre of Western Britain, opens at Aunty Social this September, she sat down for coffee, scones and an exclusive interview with someone already familiar with her work – her daughter, Helen Rodger – and even picked up the bill.
I’ve followed Christine Rodger’s work for decades – you could say I was raised on it. Not because I had an incredibly cultured childhood, or, indeed, because Chris is a wildly established artist. But because she’s my mum.
Mum followed me when I moved from Sheffield to the Fylde in 2021 and I can’t shake her off. Fortunately, she’s absorbed by her work – immersed in themes that spawn rich and diverse artwork, and leading a dedicated art group with a difference. Each year, as a part of the Coastal Collective, at Heyhouses School, she guides her tribe of adult artists as they explore a theme that links to the last, the first was shelter, then maps and this year it’s signals – culminating in an exhibition at the school’s open evening each June. So she’s far too busy to care that some of the customers at Aunty Social, one of her regular haunts, see her rather more often than her own daughter does. That said, she’s now about to make a proper impact on the place as she exhibits The Coastal Theatre of Western Britain there from 10th September.
As well as being mother to a fabulous daughter (and adequate son), Chris is a prolific fine artist and teacher with a body of work spanning more than six decades. She trained in printmaking at Sheffield College of Art (as it was then) in the late 1950s, and over the years folded watercolour, acrylics and textural materials into her practice – moving between two and three dimensions to record and interpret the natural world.
Chris’s subjects have ranged from plant life to geology, travelled from Iceland to Japan via Morocco, taken in the archaeology of the Brigante tribe and explored Palaeolithic art. But one thread runs through it all. Between the 1980s and early 2000s, Chris and my dad, Ian, sailed the west coast of Britain in their small cruisers – summers spent exploring the Scottish islands, the Isle of Man and Ireland – first from landlocked Sheffield, and in retirement from their base on Anglesey before Ian passed away.
The Coastal Theatre of Western Britain, does two things – it looks back at these original works, through sketchbooks and finished pieces, and reframes them with her contemporary eye in new compositions in two and three dimensions.
So, in preparation for this exhibition, I made Mum buy me a scone and a coffee, and she talked me through this latest body of work.
She explained that the sketchbooks at its heart were born of necessity.
“Sketchbooks were my response to not being successful with a camera on a small boat,” she told me. “I wanted to record what I saw with my own eye, thinking quickly. Sometimes I only had five minutes before putting up a sail – I was an essential part of the crew, so it had to fit around running the boat. Five or ten minutes while the landscape retreated.”
“Most sketchbooks are time-bound snapshots – like keeping a ship’s log.”
There’s a deeper lineage in the work too. Chris found herself thinking about the old nautical charts, with their little drawings of harbour entrances and anchorages made by naval artists – accurate, mechanical, made so a sailor would recognise the land.
“I was quite often the eyes for Ian while he was helming,” she says. “I’d be looking out for significant features and feeding that information back.”
Her sketchbooks sit in that tradition – the working artist as part of the crew, recording at speed.
“Most sketchbooks are time-bound snapshots – like keeping a ship’s log.”
The sea chose her materials as much as she did. Waterproof pens, soft graphite crayons – “good in a heavy sea, and if they drop into the bilges they don’t crumble” – and, as her skills grew, watercolours and aquarelle pencils. Pastels, she notes, “cause chaos”. Going ashore meant working hands-free and easel-free, everything packed waterproof into the dinghy, one eye always on the wind and the tide.
Now based on the Fylde, Chris has returned to those logs and begun making new work from them – canvases and collages, incorporating found natural objects that look at the same coastline through the lens of time. Fish farms, turbines, gas rigs – the changes that industry and development have written onto the views she once drew from the water. It’s the west coast seen twice: once in the moment, from a moving deck, and again now, with everything that has happened since.
So, I’m thrilled the exhibition is coming to Aunty Social. At the preview on Thursday 10th September there’ll be a short interview, where I’ll speak more to Chris about her practice and the work – tickets are limited, so do book a place. And on Saturday 12th, Chris will be at Aunty Social from 11am-3pm to share the work in person. Part of the exhibition hangs in the downstairs foyer, viewable any time the shop is open, the remainder is upstairs in the workshop – just ask at the shop to arrange a look.
Book here. And follow her on Instagram: @small_worlds_artist
