Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 4 June, 2011

AMONG celebrated American painter Alex Katz’s series of small painted studies there are several beautiful beings, including his friends and family who also appear among a sequence of portrait heads perched atop a green table. A crowd of bodiless people vying for attention.

Souvenir de L’lle des Saintes, 1979, watercolour and gouache on paper © 2011 Cy Twombly ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

Part of the three-year Artist Rooms project, from the collection amassed by art collector and curator Anthony d’Offray and donated to the nation, this exhibition at the Pier Arts Centre is a rare opportunity to see work by this influential artist.

Katz, born in 1927, is best known for his large scale figurative works, and these small studies in paint were made as preparation for larger studio-based pieces. Influenced by expressionism and Japanese art, decorative human subjects are placed on decentred landscapes, painted in situ, as are his small landscape studies.

My eye was particularly caught by the sparkling summer beach scene, ‘Penobscot’, in oil on board, depicting a moment of a perfect day on the Maine coast in 1999. Equally, ‘Young Trees 1989’, with its heightened green foreground and black sky, is direct and unsettling, the visible brushstrokes conveying mood and intimacy.

In ‘City Night’ winter branches form a grid across the modernist architecture of a New York apartment block. Together these small works are distinct and consistent, characterised by controlled brush marks and planes of flat colour.

Fellow American Cy Twombley’s works show ways of working very differently with paint. His suite of watercolours entitled ‘Souvenir de l’Ille des Saintes’ (Memory of the Island of Les Saintes), represents his first experiments with watercolour, made while staying in the French Caribbean in 1979.

Twombley, born a year later in 1928, has spent 50 years exploring references from nature, literature, classical history and mythology, using graffiti art and illusion. The island suite is mark-making using spontaneous saturated colour with watercolour and gouache.

On the first sheet is scrawled the title of the series followed by blotted dabs of ephemeral riots of colour, perhaps representing the riot of growth and sensuous fug of a semi-tropical island. It’s creative; certainly, unconscious daubing; perhaps, self indulgent; almost certainly.

His monoprint triptych ‘Lepanto I II and III’ references his interest in heritage with ships caught up in a 16^th century sea battle; his scribblings akin to that of a schoolboy learning history.

Upstairs on another level at the Pier is local artist Diana Leslie’s show of work, Hill & Voe, New Work by Diana Leslie (until 26 April, 2011), focusing on Stromness buildings and harbour, coastline and environs.

Diana Leslie, From Brinkie’s Brae, 2011, oil on wood. Photograph Rebecca Marr

This hardy soul also works out of doors in most weathers, chronicling the town’s landmarks, almost recording a social history. There is the Co-op with the petrol forecourt across the road and Stromness Post Office, with a spot of artistic licence via an imaginary ‘No Loitering’ sign and the Dive Cellar shop.

Boats in the harbour in ‘Boats in the Wind’ and the distinctive gable ends of Stromness houses in ‘The Waterfront’ capture the scenes expressively in oil or by pencil in sketchbook studies.

Diana Leslie - The Waterfront, 2011, oil on wood (photo Rebecca Marr)

Orcadian by birth, after studying at Glasgow School of Art, Leslie returned to Orkney in 2005 and joins a long line of accomplished Orkney artists. This work is important for the islands’ art heritage and a delight to see.

Down the street at Northlight Studio, it is worth popping in this week to view A Right Good Yarn (until 2 April, 2011), tapestries from winter weaving classes. Broadly diverse work from twenty students of the weaving studio show just how great a teacher Ros Bryant is by teaching them the tools they need without inhibiting their creativity.

From corn-coloured crop circles woven with raffia to handcrafted silver standing stones placed on a backdrop of heather and sky-blue wool, Orkney’s land sea and skyscapes are depicted imaginatively. Some are finished while others are works in progress still on the loom, revealing how the craft is created.

On the door is a sign saying classes include a yarn, tea and cake. There is always laughter here too, spilling out onto the street while the serious matter of this visual art form is painlessly explored and learned.

© Catherine Turnbull, 2011

Links

• Pier Arts Centre
• Artist Rooms