Castle Gallery, Inverness, until 21 May 2011

THE Castle Gallery’s latest solo exhibition is a dual celebration, showcasing the work of Black Isle based artist Gillian Jones and marking the gallery’s 10th Anniversary. Since opening on 20th April 2001, the Castle Gallery has consistently presented work of quality and it is entirely appropriate that the work of a local artist with a long association with the gallery be celebrated in this 10th anniversary show.

What is evident throughout is the artist’s command of her chosen media in a series of watercolours, wood engravings and lino prints of varying scale. How these techniques inform each other, and the dynamics between the intensity of work on an intimate scale and the freedom of mark in larger works, is one of the most fascinating elements of the show.

Avoch

The artist’s considerable skill as a printmaker is obvious; the intricacy of a small scale wood engraving like Avoch ed 1 is both delicate and beautifully defined in stark black and white. The incredible detail and energy in the sky, the curvature of the horizon and angular entrance to the harbour reinterpret a familiar scene with precision and clarity. Exploration of a range of mark and strong design can also be seen in the lino print River, Snizort ed 12, where the landscape is abstracted into an interlocking pattern of bold form in purple, orange and ochre, the flow of water depicted in a delicate sweep of fluid line.

There is an impressive balance struck between formal structure and the fluidity of paint handling seen in the artist’s larger scale watercolour compositions which are the main focus of the exhibition. Watercolour is an unforgiving medium, and Jones delivers without hesitation a direct response to the landscape full of spontaneity and vigour. The bold and confident brushwork in Tarbat Ness, for example, works in brilliant counterpoint to the overall design of the composition. Use of colour matches the energy of large brush marks, reimagining the landscape in the vibrant red foreshore, purple tangle of seaweed, ochre dunes and the prominent lighthouse in bands of red and white.

Tarbat Ness

Even in paintings with a high horizon line Jones allows the sky a wonderful sense of expansion in her use of bare white paper, this restraint in her use of the watercolour medium makes the freedom of individual marks all the more potent. In this way she allows the subject to live and breathe, conveying the immediacy of painting “on the spot” and of being grounded within a particular environment. A work such as Torrin, Skye (Watercolour) is a particularly lyrical example, the eye lead into the composition by the rhythmic brushwork with an anchorage of dark mountains and pure paper sky accented by clouds of blue and purple above.

Human dwelling feels very much embedded in the landscape in this and other works in the exhibition. The small cottage in Torrin, Skye is sunken into the view of the valley below, and although there is no figurative content in the artist’s work there is a human element present in many of the works which seems representative of an intrinsic and heartfelt relationship with the landscape.

Torrin, Skye

Towards Loch Harport, Skye (Watercolour and gouache) is another example, the heightened perspective rendering the white cottages as part of a pattern of life, nestled in a landscape of serpentine streams of blue leading down to the sea. The winding roads and passing places and resilient headland of raw sienna and ochre in the distance are also part of the fabric of the image, visualised as a harmonic balance between natural and human elements. The varying saturation of pigment and the way that layers of colour and mark emerge from the ground allows the entire scene to sing.

Two paintings of island locations Blue House Harris (Watercolour) and Na Gearranan, Lewis, intensify this idea of embedded human culture or habitation; the Blue House in its homely and welcoming cadmium red and cerulean blue set within an olive green and ochre landscape, crisscrossed by tracks as if seen from a bird’s eye view and the image of Lewis where the sparse pattern of dwellings merges with the stone in denser layers of mark both convey a unique sense of place and belonging.

Jones’s paintings and prints inspired by the landscape of Skye, the Moray Firth, the Black Isle and the outer Hebrides are consistently balanced, and as the first solo exhibition from the artist in a decade, it will be extremely interesting to see how this work continues to evolve in the future. Where the layering, precision and design elements of printmaking and the fluidity and freedom of watercolour meet, the artist has created an engaging body of work grounded in the landscape of the Highlands and Islands.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• Castle Gallery