'Coast & Country': An exhibition celebrating the landscapes of Scotland

16th October until November 29th 2015

Introduction

Landscape painting in Scotland has a heritage as rich and varied as the iconic rolling hills and rugged coastlines themselves. It is as central to the creation of Scotland’s modern cultural identity as the poetry of Burns or the novels of Walter Scott. When Alexander Nasmyth (1758-1840) – a contemporary and friend of these two pioneers, who was described as ʹthe founder of Scottish landscape traditionʹ – began depicting the Highlands in all the grandeur and sublimity with which they now appear to our imaginations, he was crafting the lens through which Scotland came to see itself, with clarity and distinction, as though for the first time.

Over the intervening centuries, it has been the unceasing compulsion of artists to return to such scenes; to look with fresh eyes over these beloved vistas, and to invest them with their own individual meaning. ScotlandArt is delighted to exhibit four artists who have, over the course of their careers, developed their own unique and evocative means of responding to the representative challenge which these locations provoke—the flickering of

the heather-coated mountainsides beneath fickle Highland skies, or else the peculiar translucency of light, familiar to anyone who has looked out to the Western Isles, or East over the North Sea. Ultimately, each of these artists conceives of style as a means of interpreting the spirit of place; the individuality of their approach is testament both to their accomplishment, and to the unique personal significance which ScotlandĘšs landscapes continue to hold for us all.

Below: Alexander Nasmyth, 1758–1840. Loch Awe, Argyllshire. 1785.

Sarah Carrington Graduating in 1999 from Edinburgh University with a sell-out degree show, Sarah Carrington began her career as a self-employed artist based in Edinburgh.

Over the years, she has developed a highly distinctive means of painting land and seascapes in a combination of layers, including “acrylic, emulsion, ink and oil, sometimes mixed with sand”, which is “unique to each work as it evolves over time.”

Below (top): ‘Storm Clouds, Causeway Coast’, mixed media with gold leaf, £1800 Below (bo om): ’Towards Erraid, Knockvologan, Mull’, mixed media with gold leaf, £1200

Through her desire to “capture the spirit of a place, the weather of a moment”, Carrington hopes that her viewers “can perhaps revisit some memories through the various paintings and have some sort of connection, by being enveloped in the scene”.

Now living on the north coast of Ireland, she continues to seek out new locations, to be “captivated and challenged by new views

and vistas”, all the while delighted at the deep connection, both culturally and topographically, which the north coast of Ireland holds with Scotland. Both are Above: ‘Towards Dutchman’s Cap and Staffa from “often rugged yet at Iona’, mixed media with gold leaf, £1800 times gentle, dramatic while also peaceful, and the changeable weather of both lands is a common factor... …the land and sea is a constant, but the light and weather is always different, never the same.”

She names Joan Eardley as her principle influence, whose work she feels “displayed a deep understanding of the power and nature of the sea, painted with such urgency, and with remarkable humanity”, and whose preoccupation with the coast from Catterline, in AberLe : ‘Rain Clouds over Tory Island, Co. Donegal’, mixed media with gold leaf, £1600

deenshire, is one which Carrington shares. However, she is equally happy to concur with Eardleyʹs response to the Scottish Revival poet Sydney Goodsir Smith “as a matter of fact, my greatest influence is looking at nature”.

Below (le ): ‘Storm Island, Iona’, mixed media and gold leaf, £550.

Below (right): ‘Dark Sky over Rum & Eigg’, mixed media and gold leaf’, £1800 Below (bo om): ‘Storm Clouds, Isle of Gigha’, mixed media and gold leaf, £1200

Chris Forsey

Chris Forsey began his career over twenty-five years ago as a watercolourist, enjoying what he terms “the freedom and excitement of the medium”, and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Artists in Watercolour, RI, in 2009. However, to achieve his current painting idiom he has, over the years, added a host of other media, working now in “watercolour, acrylic paints and inks, oil pastels and oil sticks, with equipment ranging from flat brushes to toothbrushes, palette knives, card, finger, roller and rag.” This, he feels, has created “a large element of serendipity in my painting: the unexpected accident and result in the mixture of media adding to my emotional pictorial response to a scene, creating visual impact and excite-

Above (le ): ‘Along the Tideline, Crail’, mixed media, £1250 Above (right): ‘Gorse and Gli ering Water, Loch Carron’, mixed media, £1250

ment in my work”.

Forsey is an itinerant traveller around the coasts of Britain, which are so varied that he finds all of them inspiring, yet perhaps especially those rugged areas “where the terrain is broken, jagged, rocky and weathered”. His tools and media enable him, after initially planning his scenes, with meticulous draughtsmanship, to give himself free rein to express land and sea “ in an emotional and descriptive, almost semi abstract way”. In the present collection, we see his dynamic use of colour applied to areas of Scotland so distinct as the quaint, picturesque East Neuk of Fife to the dramatic, sublime West Coast at Loch Carron.

Right: ‘Autumn Birch, Loch Carron’, mixed media, £1250

Above (top): ‘Along the Tideline, Crail’, mixed media, £1250 Above (bo om): ‘Gorse and Gli ering Water, Loch Carron’, mixed media, £1250

Forsey counts Turner among his influences, for “his romanticism and his use of mixed media”, yet, perhaps befitting an artist whose own mix of media is so eclectic, he also draws inspiration from a wide and disparate array of British artists over the last century, seeking out “passion, expression and dynamism” wherever they may be found.

Below (le ): ‘Frosty Fields and Evening Lights’, mixed media, £1150 Below (right): ‘Evening Light, Westerly Wind, Skye’, mixed media, £1150 Below (bo om): ‘Plockton, Sunshine and Showers’, mixed media, £975

Robert Kelsey Robert Kelsey was born in Glasgow in 1949, and went on to study at the Glasgow School of Art during what Kelsey proclaims to be ʹthe best possible period in its historyʹ, under the aegis of three inspirational painters and tutors: David Donaldson, Alexander Goudie, and James D Robertson. Since 1994, Kelsey has been the subject of over twenty solo exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Chicago; in recent years, he has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and served until February 2015 as the President of the Glasgow Art Club.

Above (left): ‘Towards the Isle of Rhum’, oil on linen, £3150 Above (right): ‘Windy Beach, Harris’, oil on linen, £1250Left:

Above: ‘Eilean Donan Castle in Winter’, oil on linen, £3150

The present collection of Kelseyʹs work displays those skilful and sensitive depictions of what he terms “the loneliness and serenity of certain locations” - from the Western Isles to the iconic Eilean Donan castle - for which he has garnered an enviable following over the years.

Kelsey will finish each canvas in one or two sittings,

and this highly direct approach is apparent in his work through the broad brushstrokes and bold, yet subtle colours which characterise his seas and skies.

His colour palette, running from Ultramarine Violet through Ultramarine, Cobalt and Cerulean blues, is influenced by the Scottish Colourists, in especial Samuel J Peploe and F C B Cadell. He shares with them likeBelow: ‘Yellow Sunset, Argyll’, Oil on canvas, £3800

wise a faith in the primacy of strong colour in capturing the essence of a place with “vigour and feeling”.

For Kelsey, “the main interest and challenge of painting lies in capturing the particular translucency and clarity of light in different parts of the world.”

Above: ‘Woodside Terrace, Spring Light’, oil on linen, £2750

Below: ‘Small Boats at Brancaster Staithe’, oil on linen, £3800

Allison Young Allison Young graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1988, with First class honours, completing a post graduate before studying for a year at Lodz School of Fine Art in Poland, with a British Council Scholarship.

She was Artist in Residence at Edinburgh Zoo in 1991.

She now lives and works in Edinburgh, and concentrates on landscape painting, primarily of Tiree and Lothian.

Above: ‘Co age, Salum, Tiree’, oil on canvas, £845

What strikes us perhaps most forcibly with Youngʹs interpretation of these regions is the impression of vastness, created by the immense expanses of vibrantly coloured beach or sky through which we are immersed in the scene, and which are the result of Young’s careful manipulation of the position of the horizon.

Below (le ): ‘Silver Shore, Aberlady’, oil on canvas, £845 Below (right): ‘Smooth Shore, Salum, Tiree’, oil on canvas, £845 Below (bo om): ‘Purple Sky, Gullane’, oil on canvas, £845

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