VICTORIA CROWE
Low Winter Sun
VICTORIA CROWE
Low Winter Sun DECEMBER 2023
16 Dundas Street, Edinburgh EH3 6HZ | +44 (0) 131 558 1200 | scottish–gallery.co.uk
CHANGING LIGHT Victoria Crowe brings us Low Winter Sun as a fitting way to end the year and mark our own winter solstice. Developed over the last two years, the exhibition charts the artist’s journey from her home and studio in the Scottish Borders to the islands of Orkney and back again. Low Winter Sun is like a book of revelation, reflecting the artist’s ability to communicate her outstanding practice in all media. In 2022, Crowe made two trips to Orkney, with a particular interest in exploring the contrasting light of the summer and winter solstices. Her visit was not a chance encounter, it was part of a residency programme with the Royal Scottish Academy and the Pier Arts Centre, allowing the opportunity and freedom to immerse herself in a new location and adapt her practice to quickly record the drama and subtleties of changing light. Crowe was both daunted and excited in equal measure by the challenge of this new environment, the height of sky, the persistence of the running boundary of land and sea, immediately aware of new possibilities. She welcomed a new experience outwith her normal studio practice, relying on fluid media and pre-primed paper to allow her to notate these possibilities; in her own words, groping towards an external realisation. The white nights of the summer solstice were a particular inspiration, allowing her to capture the extraordinary character and atmosphere of long days and the longer twilight. Visiting first in June and again in November, when Orkney only experiences a maximum of six hours of daylight, she was drawn to the stark beauty of the moon illuminating the landscape of the islands, its cycle the dominant celestial manifestation as the watery sun barely crept above the horizon.
Crowe continued to develop ideas in her home studio in West Linton. These include several works which examine the piercing winter sun refracted through the icy window at her home. Back in Edinburgh and Glasgow, she sought the collaboration of printmakers to tease out both her drawings and emotions. These images, which feature a forest in twilight, are both ethereal and striking. This continues Crowe’s investigation into the way in which landscape becomes almost unfamiliar, surprising and unknowable, depending on light level. At home, the recalled full Orcadian moon became explicit in a series of six exquisite small oils, both luminous and flecked with pure pigment. The moon paintings have inspired a major new gun-tufted rug, created in collaboration with Dovecot Studios. Orkney has many dimensions feeding into the artist’s past: fire, dusk, reflected light from snow, the filigree of bare trees and ice. Her monumental painting Strange Illumination of 2022 might recall a Viking funeral. Her garden at West Linton, suffused in soft light, prepared her for the studio at Birsay where, to use George Mackay Brown’s words, “…the moon in a hundred waters: a silver plate, a broken honeycomb, a cluster of fireflies” was a rich inspiration. Something ancient, something timeless, something elemental was Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland John Leighton’s description of Crowe’s painting in their recorded conversation at the RSA in 2023; her Orkney experience is a fulfilment of a spirituality already imbued in her work, delivered with perfect pitch, allowing us to accompany her on a path of awakening. Christina Jansen I The Scottish Gallery
Victoria Crowe at West Linton. Photograph by Iain Stewart, 2023
LOW WINTER SUN
The work featured in Low Winter Sun is very much about the possibilities and potentials of image-making during a process of working towards an as yet unknown solution. In 2022, I visited Orkney as part of the RSA and Pier Arts Centre Residency award, looking specifically at the contrasting light around the summer and winter solstices. The residency and resulting work from this, were completely out of the usual studio routine, a very different subject matter of vast sky, land and sea, with a focus on the changing light. Starting points, things from the beginning, source material, may not always look or sound much, but they contain the rich germ of evolving ideas. These are essential working tools for the artist, putting down the initial response, the first intention, and groping towards an external realisation of the experience with all its complex overlays of memory and association. Materials were an assortment of pre-primed paper, sketchbooks, fluid media like ink and watercolour, enabling me to work quickly and respond to the many new starting points that Orkney presented me with. I enjoyed the process of that period of discovery. My first trip to Orkney was in June 2022, at the point of solstice. The second part of the residency was made five months later, in November, when there were just six hours of
daylight. The darkness was therefore the thing to explore as I was always aware of how the daylight was either struggling to assert itself or heralding the early darkness with sunsets around 3.30pm. I went in time for the full moon, in the early part of the month, so that I could work with night skies and the luminosity of moonrise. I worked in Stromness for a couple of nights to see the moon and sky reflected in the water of Hamnavoe. At the residency in Birsay, the moon rose in the east-facing window of the studio. This gave me several nights to study and paint the brilliance, subtlety, and colour of moonlight on fast-moving clouds when the land was enveloped in winter darkness. Occasionally, tiny lights from dwellings and car lights flared on distant fields, but everything was dominated by the moonlight above, within the vast distances of the sky. I completed tiny studies of these changing, mesmeric night skyscapes. When I returned to Edinburgh, I began painting a series of oil paintings to develop these ideas. I found when painting I was using tiny, almost pointillist flecks of colour to build up the tonal contrast and to keep the colour pure. Seeing the series of six of these larger oils together, made me realise that they could be translated into a huge scale through the
medium of gun-tufting. The resulting wallhanging rug was made at Dovecot Studios this year in collaboration with Master Weaver Louise Trotter. It captures the magnificence of the night sky, the depth of colour within moonlit areas, and of course the grandeur of scale. Together, we worked on a range of colour mixes for the wool, and happily for me, it echoes the way I applied the pigment to the paintings by virtue of the textural quality of the end-on woollen fibres. I felt it would be a wonderful way of bringing large scale into the smaller studies as well as exploiting the textural qualities of the piece. This is my first tufted rug with Dovecot Studios. In spring of 2023, I began a series of monotypes at the Edinburgh Printmakers workshop. In many ways, this way of working echoed the Orkney work in that the images were swiftly-worked possibilities and starting points. There is a definition of monotype as being ‘somewhere between drawing and painting’ and I found the results to be unexpected and quite exciting; one image would encourage another response; one print could ghost into another and give the opportunity to exploit a chance event. It was rather like making visible and preserving the pentimenti and reworkings which occur during my longer process of developing a many-layered oil painting.
During the bitter weather of last November and December, I began a series of work responding to the low sun refracted through frost on the inside of my studio window. Over the years that I have observed landscape, these recent starting points have offered me new possibilities by heightening my perception of the liminal power of light. Victoria Crowe The Pier Arts Centre will be hosting a solo exhibition of Victoria Crowe’s work in 2024/25.
Victoria Crowe in Orkney. Photograph by Kenneth Gray, 2022
THE FIRE
Every winter I am struck by the vibrant colour of the coral bark maple in my daughter Gemma’s garden, which is just below my Edinburgh studio. I’ve painted and made prints of this glowing red in the winter dark many times before. When I set up branches in the studio, an unexpected beam of sunlight came across them, casting shadows and illumination on the left. I had previously explored the idea of fire in the middle of winter. This latest painting was very much considering the power of the contrast between burning and darkness. Victoria Crowe
1 | Strange Illumation oil on linen, 101.5 x 127 cm
2 | Coral Bark Maple, Wolf Moon screenprint, 69 x 54 cm edition of 40 in collaboration with Glasgow Print Studio
ORKNEY
3 | Yesnaby Rocks and Shining Sea ink and wash on rice paper, 29 x 43 cm
4 | Orkney Sky and Sea oil on board, 23 x 25 cm
5 | Occluded Sky oil on board, 23 x 25 cm
6 | Birsay Headland mixed media on Whenzou paper, 49 x 133 cm
7 | Cliff Outline ink and wash, 21 x 30 cm
8 | Winter Sea, Birsay mixed media, 21 x 30 cm
9 | Midnight Sky oil on canvas, 12 x 16 cm
10 | Return from Stromness, Midnight Dawn oil on linen, 20 x 23 cm
11 | Near Yesnaby, Shining Winter Sea mixed media on pumice primed paper, 25 x 18 cm
12 | Low Winter Sun over Hoy ink and watercolour on Chinese paper, 27 x 45 cm
13 | November Afternoon, Birsay Window mixed media, 10 x 27 cm
14 | Night Reflection, Birsay oil and ink on pumice primed paper, 22 x 30 cm
…the moon in a hundred waters: a silver plate, a broken honeycomb, a cluster of fireflies. George Mackay Brown, An Orkney Tapestry, 1969
THE MOON SEQUENCE
15 | Moon Sequence composite work in six pieces oil on pumice primed paper, 10 x 15 cm (each)
15 | Moon Sequence composite work in six pieces oil on pumice primed paper, 10 x 15 cm (each)
16 | Above Stromness oil on panel, 20 x 25 cm
17 | Solstice Moon oil on panel, 20 x 25 cm
18 | Stromness Moon oil on panel, 20 x 25 cm
19 | Pillowed Moon; Land Lights oil on panel, 20 x 25 cm
20 | A Parting of the Clouds oil on panel, 20 x 25 cm
21 | Intense Moonlight oil on panel, 20 x 25 cm
Victoria Crowe has collaborated on several large-scale projects with Dovecot Studios and has a good understanding of how the weavers will interpret her starting points to reach an image of scale, richness and grandeur. A rug similar to and yet with a totally different quality from the original painted image. Dovecot Master Weaver Louise Trotter tufted the rug over several months in early 2023, resulting in this unique, new interpretation, Orcadian Series: Above Stromness.
22 | Orcadian Series: Above Stromness gun-tufted wool rug collaboration between Victoria Crowe and Dovecot Studios, 160 x 212 cm
Master Weaver Louise Trotter (far right), Dovecot Studios, who gun-tufted Above Stromness by Victoria Crowe. Photographs by Kenneth Gray, 2023
HOME
Victoria Crowe painted Large Tree Group in 1975. It is an iconic work from A Shepherd’s Life series. The etching and screenprint made in 2014 pays homage to the impact and continuing memory of Jenny Armstrong. When Dovecot Studios celebrated their centenary in 2012, they commissioned a large-scale tapestry of Large Tree Group which was unveiled in 2013 in the exhibition Fleece to Fibre: The Making of the Large Tree Group Tapestry during the Edinburgh International Festival. The tapestry was subsequently acquired for the permanent collection of National Museums Scotland.
23 | Large Tree Group, Winter etching and screenprint, 51 x 71 cm edition of 250 in collaboration with Graal Press
24 | Stillness lithograph and screenprint, 57 x 77 cm edition of 40 in collaboration with Edinburgh Printmakers
25 | Resilient Tree, Rising Moon woodblock, screenprint and lithograph, 77 x 83.5 cm edition of 50 in collaboration with Edinburgh Printmakers
26 | Still Point of the Turning Year screenprint, 69 x 54 cm edition of 40 in collaboration with Glasgow Print Studio
27 | Border Hill screenprint, 72 x 72 cm edition of 40 in collaboration with Glasgow Print Studio
28 | Edges of the Night oil on paper, 49.5 x 35.5 cm
29 | Night Forest monotype, 51 x 45 cm
30 | Silver Birch oil on paper, 45 x 51 cm
31 | Lights in a Mysterious Landscape monotype, 45 x 51 cm
32 | View Through monotype, 45 x 51 cm
33 | Warm Winter Light monotype, 45 x 51 cm
34 | City Evening monotype, 45 x 51 cm
35 | Drawing Towards monotype, 45 x 51 cm
36 | The Hill at West Linton oil and ink on paper, 76 x 90 cm
37 | First Snow Mirrored monotype and pastel, 35 x 25 cm
38 | Winter View, West Linton mixed media, 49.5 x 35.5 cm
39 | Winter Landscape, Nine Mile Burn monotype, 46 x 50.5 cm
40 | Nine Mile Burn monotype and oil, 38 x 52 cm
41 | Frost on the Window ink and watercolour, 20 x 20 cm
42 | Softer Light mixed media, 20 x 15 cm
43 | December 12th mixed media, 21 x 15 cm
44 | Moment of the Evening watercolour, 17.5 x 17 cm
45 | Almost Twilight mixed media, 18 x 34 cm
46 | Misted Horizon oil and graphite on museum board, 69 x 75 cm
VICTORIA CROWE OBE, DHC, FRSE, MA (RCA), RSA, RSW (b.1945) Victoria Crowe studied at Kingston School of Art from 1961–65 and at the Royal College of Art, London, from 1965–68. At her postgraduate show, she was invited by Sir Robin Philipson to teach at Edinburgh College of Art. For thirty years she worked as a part-time lecturer in the School of Drawing and Painting while developing her own artistic practice. She lives and works in West Linton, Edinburgh, and Venice. Her first one-person exhibition, after leaving the Royal College of Art, was in London and she has subsequently gone on to have over fifty solo shows. Her first solo exhibition at The Scottish Gallery was in 1970. In August 2018, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery held a retrospective exhibition of Crowe’s portraits, Beyond Likeness. In 2019, the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, honoured Crowe’s career with a four-floor retrospective, 50 Years of Painting. Her retrospective enjoyed a record number of visitors and embraced every aspect of Crowe’s practice and featured over 150 artworks. The Scottish Gallery hosted a complementary exhibition in September 2019, 50 Years: Drawing & Thinking. Victoria Crowe is a member of the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours (RSW). In 2000, her exhibition A Shepherd’s Life, consisting of work selected from the 1970s and 80s, was one of the National Galleries of Scotland’s Millennium exhibitions. The exhibition toured Scotland and was re-gathered in 2009 for a three-month exhibition at the Fleming Collection, London. Crowe was awarded an OBE for Services to Art in 2004 and, from 2004–07, she was a Senior Visiting Scholar at St Catharine’s College,
Cambridge. The resulting work, Plant Memory, was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 2007 and subsequently toured Scotland. In 2009, she received an Honorary Degree from The University of Aberdeen and, in 2010, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2013, Dovecot Studios wove a large-scale tapestry of Crowe’s painting Large Tree Group. This collaborative tapestry was acquired for the National Museums Scotland. In 2015, Crowe was an invited artist-inresidence at Dumfries House and, in 2016, a group of work by the artist was acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland. Crowe was commissioned in 2014 by the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers to design a fortymetre tapestry for their new hall in the city of London; it took over three years to weave and was installed in January 2017. In collaboration with singer Matthew Rose, Crowe produced a 70-minute video of her work, Winterreise: a Parallel Journey. The film was shown in Snape Maltings; Wigmore Hall, London; in 2018 at the Weesp Chamber Music Festival in the Netherlands; and in South Korea in 2023. In August 2018, The Scottish National Portrait Gallery held a retrospective exhibition of Crowe’s portraits, Beyond Likeness. In 2019, the City Art Centre, Edinburgh, honoured Crowe’s career with a four-floor retrospective, 50 Years of Painting. Her retrospective enjoyed a record number of visitors and embraced every aspect of Crowe’s practice and featured over 150 artworks.
Victoria Crowe at West Linton. Photograph by Iain Stewart, 2023
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Art in Healthcare Artlink Edinburgh – Western General Hospital Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council Chatsworth House, Bakewell City Art Centre, Edinburgh Dumfries House, Ayrshire The Fleming Collection Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Inverclyde National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh National Museums Scotland National Portrait Gallery, London National Trust for Scotland, Hermiston Quay Newcastle University NHS Lothian Charity – Tonic Collection Parliamentary Art Collection Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh St Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge St John’s College, University of Oxford Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh The Hunterian, University of Glasgow The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh University of Aberdeen University of Edinburgh Wardlaw Museum, University of St Andrews West Lothian Council, County Buildings Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, London Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, London
Studio in Linkshouse, Birsay. Photograph by Kenneth Gray, 2022
Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition Victoria Crowe LOW WINTER SUN 30 November – 23 December 2023 Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/victoriacrowe ISBN: 978 1 912900 76 3 Production: The Scottish Gallery Design: Kenneth Gray Photography of paintings: Boyd Wild, John McKenzie, Emily Randall Print: Pureprint Group All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers. All essays and picture notes copyright The Scottish Gallery.
Cover: The Hill at West Linton, oil and ink on paper, 76 x 90 cm (cat. 36) (detail) Inside front cover: Still Point of the Turning Year, screenprint, 69 x 54 cm (cat. 26) (detail) Inside back cover: Edges of the Night, oil on paper, 49.5 x 35.5 cm (cat. 28) (detail)