19 Albert Street, Kirkwall, Orkney, until 16 April, 2011

AFTER taking time out from exhibiting while having two children, award-winning abstract landscape artist Laura Drever is now renting space above Argo’s bakery shop in Kirkwall for two weeks to exhibit new work completed in the last two years along with drawings made over the last ten years.

Laura’s approach is to take a walk in the Orkney landscape and use the memory as a sketchbook. This direct experience, of walking, experiencing and observing ends with drawing and painting in the studio, creating a mood and memory of a place’s ever-changing character.

Laura Drever - Tooin VI

The Tooin series, from which this exhibition takes its name, is inspired from a walk up the Dale o Corrigall in Harray during a collaboration with archaeologist Dan Lee. The work springs from the taste, feel, sight, folklore, history and experience of a walk across the peat bogs and along ancient tracks by a burn.

Laura says: “I like to take walks like this that I did in childhood and see how the landscape has changed and try and get the experience of seeing it as an adult on the canvas. It’s an organic process. It was great to go up the dale with Dan and see how archaeologists work, look at the ground.

“Tooin has been a pleasure to work on.  Taking walks and discovering new places in Orkney to focus my work on has been refreshing and allowed me to experiment with materials, shapes and colours. Orkney’s unique light and elemental changes have all played an important part in this new collection.  Moving on from this I will revisit some of the new places found and look for changes and new ways to recreate the landscape.”

The results in ochre and peat brown show shifting patterns of time, mood and light. Interpreting the sense of the place has removed the constraints of drawing the subject in situ.

Laura studied at Edinburgh College of Art, returning to Orkney in 2003. She has also collaborated with writers including poet Harry Gilonis for the pamphlet Reading Hölderlin on Orkney, (published by Brae Editions – a pamphlet of poems by Orkney poet Lesley Harrison with Laura’s drawings exploring birds and flight is scheduled for June publication). Laura’s drawings in this series feature the instantly recognisable shape of the hills of North Hoy and the elemental watery depths of Rackwick.

Open Saturday and Sundays, 12-4pm, and Wednesday to Fridays, 12-3pm.

© Catherine Turnbull, 2011

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• Laura Drever