Ellis O'Connor and Jonathan Shearer by Strathearn & Annan Galleries

Ellis O’Connor and Jonathan Shearer

Opening Saturday 2nd November at 10am

We are excited to invite you to our last focus Exhibition of 2024 featuring the work of Ellis O’Connor and Jonathan Shearer. We’re great fans and supporters of both these talented artist’s work - Ellis a young artist rapidly developing a large following both home and abroad and Jonathan, a longer established and well-known artist further north but rarely exhibiting in Glasgow, so we’re delighted to be able to show a collection of new paintings from them both for you to enjoy.

Both Ellis and Jonathan are powerful land and seascape painters with very different styles developed to capture the raw energy of the environment around them. Deeply connected to Scotland’s natural landscapes, they spend much of their time painting outside and on location - capturing the fleeting moments in nature in their smaller paintings en plein air, before returning to their studios to work on and develop the larger pieces.

Jonathan’s bold, expressive and highly textured paintings capture the drama and spontaneity of the Highlands, often looking entirely abstract when viewing up close but the image takes shape and form as you step back to view from further away.

Meanwhile Ellis’s evocative paintings are dynamic, strong and semi-abstract reflections of the constantly varying effect of the weather on the land. Together, these artists offer a compelling exploration of our landscape - rugged mountains, turbulent seas, expansive skies and the ever-changing energy of the world around us.

We’re looking forward to another great exhibition and seeing you in the gallery. Best wishes, Scott, Susan and the Annan Team

This catalogue features a small selection of the works available. The full exhibition of works will be able to view online at www.annanart.com

Sales enquiries welcome on receipt of this catalogue. Exhibition from 2nd to 24th November 2024

Front Cover: Ellis O’Connor ‘Darkness Upon Us’ Oil on Canvas, Image 100x100cm

Jonathan Shearer ‘Black Carls, Beinn Eighe’ Oil on Canvas, Image 61x51cm

Ellis O’Connor

Ellis O’Connor is an award-winning contemporary landscape artist, graduating from Duncan of Jordanstone Art School in 2014 and now living and working on the Isle of Skye.

Ellis’ works depict the environment around her and the dynamic energy to be seen in the paintings are Ellis’ response to observed changes in the landscape; ‘the movement and rhythms of the sea and the land … the merging of sea with air, advancing rain and mist, ever changing light - elements that seem to be about something intangible.’

In order to immerse herself in the environment, Ellis makes much of the artwork on site where extreme weather and the elements find their way into the pieces. Ellis describes the process of working outdoors in wild weather as almost ‘performative’.

Some of the pieces made on paper on site become the basis for larger works on canvas painted back in the studio. Here, Ellis usually works with oil paint, building up the surfaces using natural substances like sand and dried seaweed.

By producing the art work she hopes it will give people a chance to connect with that landscape and respect the nature that is so wild around us, to then cultivate a deeper understanding and inspire others to make a difference.

Ellis O’Connor ‘Entranced’ Oil on Canvas, Image 50x40cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘I See Change’ Oil on Canvas, Image 100x120

Ellis O’Connor ‘Mystery’ Oil on Canvas, Image 50x50cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘I Rise’ Oil on Canvas, Image 30x100cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘A Thousand Memories’ Oil on Canvas, Image 30x100cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘Expand’ Oil on Canvas, Image 30x100cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘November’ Oil on Canvas, Image 40x40cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘Returning to Land’ Oil on Canvas, Image 60x60cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘Sit and Wonder’ Oil on Canvas, Image 40x50cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘Upheaval’ Oil on Canvas, Image 100x100cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘Approach’ Oil on Canvas, Image 50x100cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘Thundering’ Oil on Canvas, Image 50x100cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘Winter Sunset’ Oil on Canvas, Image 91x61cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘Crash’ Oil on Canvas, Image 60x60cm

Ellis O’Connor ‘We Wait’ Oil on Canvas, Image 50x50cm

Jonathan Shearer ‘Sun After the Rain, Autumn Glen Affric’ Oil on Canvas, Image 70x100cm

Jonathan Shearer

Award winning artist Jonathan Shearer graduated from Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen in 1993 and completed a Post-Graduate Diploma from the Cyprus College of Art in 1996.

Based in the Highlands, Jonathan works through a process of walking, drawing and painting directly in the highland landscape and working repeatedly in places, chosen and revisited many times. The result meaning Jonathan Shearer has developed an intimate connection with the wild places of Scotland.

“My paintings are concerned with trying to convey the sensation of being immersed in the landscape, the wind in your face, the soft bogginess of the moor beneath your feet, the clouds enveloping the mountain. The sheer exhilaration of wild places.

Working on small oil paintings outside, speed is essential - too much time spent on a sketch or a painting and the sense of what’s happening is lost. Painting must always be an emotional, vigorously expressive process. I then use the small studies to develop larger paintings back in the studio.

Generally my subjects are wild places, away from the obvious tourist spots. Ideally, I look for landscapes unaffected by man, although with forestry and other activities that sort of primeval landscape is increasingly difficult to find. Occasionally I do include man-made elements - the remains of a stone wall, a croft or some farm buildings - and these create a telling sense of scale within the vastness of the landscape. But what I prefer is that feeling of isolation; of being submerged in a landscape that has a resonance of history, although perhaps no visual evidence of mankind.”