'Adits, Shafts & Zawns ~ The North Cliffs' 1976

'Adits, Shafts & Zawns ~ The North Cliffs' 1976 oil on board 915 x 915mm by Michael J Praed (born 1941) inscribed with title, date and signed to verso complete within a closed-corner white hand-painted stepped frame with an overall size of 933 x 933mm 

An adit (from Latin aditus, entrance) or stulm is a horizontal or nearly horizontal passage to an underground mine. Miners can use adits for access, drainage, ventilation, and extracting minerals at the lowest convenient level. Adits are also used to explore for mineral veins.

A shaft (pluiral shafts) is a long, either vertical or sloping, passage through the ground.

A zawn (plural zawns) is a deep and narrow sea-inlet, especially in Cornwall and the south-west, cut by erosion into sea-cliffs with steep vertical side-walls. 

Michael Praed is a well-known contemporary artists working in his beloved Cornwall. He is a prolific painter, mainly in oils, drawing inspiration from the Cornish countryside and people. It has been said that his style is an intriguing and sometimes disturbing combination of realism and abstraction, portraying the beauty of the landscape and seascape with a sense of unease, almost with menace, in a way that few other artist have achieved. Farmsteads huddle together against an unseen enemy in a landscape devoid of living things. Deserted breakwaters curve pincer-like into an empty sea. Engine houses rise from the ground like megaliths that are half as old as time. Born in 1941 from a long line of Mousehole luggermen, Michael Praed was educated at Penzance and Falmouth School of Art followed by Brighton College of Art. He is a member of both the Newlyn and Penwith Societies of Art and has exhibited widely, retiring from teaching in 1993 to paint full time. His work ranges from large paintings of landscape and sea to smaller images depicting familiar friendly scenes of Cornishmen at work, with long lonely beaches to the bustle of a fish market, all illustrate to marvellous effect his observational and technical skills as both a painter and draughtsman.