DISCOVER The art of Cornwall

With its gorgeous coast and mild weather, Cornwall has attracted artists and crafters for generations. Jo Caird seeks out the places that inspired some of Britain's finest painters, potters and sculptors, and admires their handiwork

- Jo Caird

There's nowhere else like it," says Cornwall-based artist Paul Wadsworth as he accompanies me around his latest exhibition of huge, vibrant oil paintings at the St Ives Society of Artists.

He's talking about the contemporary arts and crafts scene, which drew Paul here in the 90s, one of hundreds, if not thousands of artists who have made the UK's most southwesterly county their home. Dynamic coastal landscapes, a buzzing creative community and a vibrant market (even in straitened times) have come together to make Cornwall a hub for artists and craftspeople.

It has been this way for more than 200 years, with artistic luminaries such as JMW Turner arriving in the early 19th century to find inspiration. It was with the coming of the Great Western Railway to West Cornwall in 1877, however, that the area really opened up, with plein air artists such as Walter Langley and Stanhope Forbes establishing one of the first art colonies in the fishing village of Newlyn. Later, in the years running up to the First World War, some artists of this Newlyn School went on to colonise the area around the nearby village of Lamorna, entranced by the natural beauty of its valley and cove.

"The St Ives School turned Cornwall into a destination for arts and crafts aficionados"

It was in 1939 that St Ives got its turn, when the abstract expressionist sculptor Dame Barbara Hepworth and her then-husband, painter Ben Nicholson, settled here. The first members of a thriving artistic community that would become known as the St Ives School, they helped set the scene for a modernist revolution in British art, in the process turning Cornwall into a destination for arts and crafts aficionados.