Waterfront Gallery, Stromness, Orkney, until 9 May

Fiona Norris - Pebble 1

THIS EXHIBITION, squirreled away in the long back gallery of a shop full of beautiful buyable prints, knitwear, CDs and take-home-from-your-holiday-stuff, is testimony to the power of friendship, the pull of home and the unexpected directions life takes us in.

The artists are old Orkney friends. Their mothers were friends before them. Fiona went to Grays in Aberdeen and did drawing and painting: Eileen to Edinburgh to do graphics. After nine years as a designer, Eileen found herself travelling the world – Romania. Pakistan, Russia, Quatar. Fiona, after a spell in Glasgow, came home to Orkney.

When Eileen returned too, they resumed their friendship. They say opposites attract – you can’t help thinking this as you look at their work. The contrast is immediately apparent as you enter the space. Norris’ The Shore 1 &2 dominate the end wall. Lowering ochre stones, Henry Moore-like in their spherical weight, feel massive, almost intimidating.

On closer inspection there’s a hint of the tie-dye going on – layers and spots of acrylic scraped back and rubbed “to intensify, like a tinted lens”, she says. Sand Aqua is just a cube of blue, at first glance – then you look deeper and it’s like seeing into the depths of a pool. Detail and texture abound among the vigorous yet delicate dark blues overlaid with chiffony seaweed strands.

Her choice, in the smaller studies, of a block shape to work on – a cube which juts from the wall – is an odd one. The roughness of the canvas isn’t a bar to a real sense she creates of water moving under light, seamed with sand; but a bit of me wants to see these works flat on a table, so that we are really looking in, and down – almost dipping a hand in.

Water’s edge is another delicate yet sensual confusion of lacy blue surf edged by that hot ochre Orkney sand. I’m less taken by Deep Red 1 2 &3, though I know the red seaweed you find here which has inspired this particular ‘tinting of the lens’. She loves spheroids – there are yellow pebbles, orange ones, deep down ones, surface-brushing ones.

Her “momentary glimpses into an underwater world” certainly work; I want her now, after these reflections of the flux of natural forms by the sea, to branch out – she has a clear understanding of the way colour heightens our perception of form. I’m looking forward to a move further up the beach.

In contrast, Bevan’s work (accompanied by words – she’s a writer too) betrays a love of detail and pattern, enhanced perhaps by her travels amongst icons, Russian dolls, Arabic markets. “Facades of buildings have always interested me”, she says – and her drawings have an architectural precision which radiates calm, while at the same time catching the essence of the moment.

In Arabic Boy and Coffee Pots, the lad is caught hefting a lustrous pot whilst directing a calculating gaze at the onlooker – a riot of stripes, diamonds and shadows, it’s charming. Doha Shopfront – a plastic paradise of balls, kids’ chairs, washing baskets – is full of meticulous observation and brilliant colour on a tiny scale.

She’d make a great illustrator – children would love these tiny observations. Already I want to know what happened to her art when the odyssey ended and she came home to Orkney.

The answer’s right here; St Magnus Cathedral Angel is a beautiful piece of drawing. The quality of quiet observation in this delicately realised piece is superb. Lichen on the dyke behind the figure is a subtle reminder of nature taking over; meanwhile the elegant stone wings are tethered to the Orkney landscape, serene and elegant.

We have a new and enticing view of the Italian Chapel, “that iconic place” which means much to her, having been an outsider in many countries. She lets us look up to the painted roof and the bully beef light holders, with their elegant curved shapes and stars.

Slightly skewed, full of rhythm, this is a fine piece – as is the Orkney Stella, where again, her writer’s imagination combines elements of Orkney – the seafaring past, the permanence of stone in St Magnus and the chapel, fish, carved faces, gulls – to create an intricate heraldic celebration. This one demands that you go back again and again.

I’m reminded of Nicola Bayley, a consummate illustrator and lateral thinker. Bevan has the same off-centre way of looking at her world in the best drawings.

Development is clear as we move to studies of Hoy Sound in colour. It’s good to see a move to the larger canvas. As you’d expect, emphasis is on the delicate. Chalky swirls of cloud around glimpses of islands; blinks of the yellow-green spring rain; and a gutsy ultramarine wave in Hoy Sound 111 which gives a tantalising glimpse of what she’s capable of when she thinks big.

These studies are the beginning, I suspect, of what will be a fruitful investigation of homecoming – an exciting response to movement, as compelling as the stillness of the angel. Two friends: two styles: two pairs of open Orkney eyes.

© Morag MacInnes, 2009