RUTH BROWNLEE, INGEBJORG SMITH & JAMES HAWKINS (Kilmorack Gallery, by Beauly, until Sunday 28 August 2005)

15 Aug 2005 in Highland, Visual Arts & Crafts

GEORGINA COBURN enjoys three different approaches to nature and landscape.

FOLLOWING ON from last month’s excellent exhibition of ‘Works on Paper’, Kilmorack Gallery presents the work of three accomplished and engaging artists in its latest show.

'Venus In The Bath' by Ingebjorg Smith

Shetland artist Ruth Brownlee combines a beautifully controlled palette with a powerful sense of the forces of nature. The range of colour in her work, primarily of blues and greens, creates both subtlety and depth and a wonderful evocation of sea and sky so dominant in the Isles.

The use of mixed media is particularly effective, adding a sensuous tactile quality to her painting. The mixing of sand into paint in ‘Clearing Skies Sannick Sands’ (mixed media on canvas) and the rhythm of her brushwork create a sense of immediacy in her art that holds the viewer’s gaze.

These land and seascapes have an emotional depth due to their sensitive handling that is powerful and arresting. ‘Wild Seas North Isles’ (mixed media on canvas) is such an example, with its churn of greens and blues and movement of water and sky. The marks of the painter’s hand can be clearly seen and have real emotional impact.

These paintings convey (in the artist’s own words) “the visual drama of the Shetland environment”. ‘Sandsting Moors’ (mixed media on board) reveals a relationship between land and sky, a barren sweep of space that is in no way empty but filled with atmosphere.

Anyone who has travelled to Scotland’s far North will identify the sense of place and spirit that Brownlee has captured so sensitively and so well. She is an expressive and accomplished artist not only in capturing the play of light and shade over unique land and seascape, but also mesmerising the viewer with the surge of the ocean and the elements that act upon it.

All three artists reveal much about the process of making art

In contrast Ingebjorg Smith’s collages are infused with playfulness, naivety and a delicate play of textures. Her work is best summed up by the wry smile of her collaged ‘Venus in a bathtub’, said to be inspired by receiving an invitation to the “Venus Rising” exhibition which has just closed at the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery.

Both her humour and use of collage are refreshing. Use of collage as a medium is characterised by an almost experimental play of materials – various layers interplay as a composition is formed and Smith’s work conveys delight in this process.

‘Song thrush by the Sea’ with its delicately scratched surface of paper, paint and layers of shimmering gold and blue is a magical image of nature. ‘Daffodil Cat’ and ‘Dog Fishing’ seem to be created with a child like joy in nature and situations that are all too often forgotten in our day to day lives. It is a joy to see them depicted here in the textural and reflective surfaces of Smith’s collages.

Her naïve drawing style is very much akin to Folk Art and her travels in Europe, Africa, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia have no doubt influenced her style and approach. Her work as a designer and illustrator particularly for children’s television infuses the work with both life and humour. ‘Pink Pants’ is a good example of the naïve qualities in her work at play.

Smith’s work is all the child-like wonderment at the world and nature combined with the adult artist’s handling of materials.

James Hawkins’ work is characterised by his handling of paint. ‘Inverpolly From Stoer’ (acrylic on canvas) is a good example of this, where a real sense of depth and sweep of coastal landscape is created by heavy impasto layers of paint. The viewer’s eye is lead into crevices between rocks and around the bay into the distance by the layered manipulation of the medium.

His triptych ‘Snow Loch Lundi’ with its textural sweep of mountains caked in painted layers of snow and ice is Hawkins at his best, unified by the three panels and with a limited palette.

‘Walking in Assynt’ combines delicate stippled and scraped handling of paint in the foreground with the smoothed stillness of water and its reflections encased in the heavy impasto sweep of mountains. This artist can clearly handle paint!

However, works such as ‘Sandy Bay Stoer’ or ‘Beinne Alligin’ are less successful. Such a heavy articulation of paint and turning up the volume in relation to colour results in the two elements fighting for the viewer’s attention.

All three artists reveal much about the process of making art, and it is always a pleasure to discover new ways of looking at the world and handling different media through exhibitions of this quality.