INSPIRED by Scottish and Italian landscapes, Sam Cartman’s first solo exhibition at Kilmorack Gallery represents a significant progression in the artist’s work to date.

THIS IS a show of absolute clarity in the skilled handling of paint, distillation of visual language and command of composition. Characteristically the relationship between elements of nature and human architecture create a sense of immediacy and tension, with linear draughtsmanship and gestural brushwork exquisitely balanced throughout. Moving more deeply into abstraction has arguably strengthened the artist’s composition, and there is new verve and dynamism in this latest body of work, taking Cartman’s practice to a whole new level.

Towards Glenshee

The artist’s acute understanding of the essential crafting of images through line, form, colour and texture is resoundingly evident. Driven by paint handling and with the element of design less consciously visible than in earlier work, formal elements of structural deliberation become fully integrated with the most articulate and subtle handling of paint. Bold planar treatment of oil on board, strong lines and a magnificently controlled palette are tempered by a variation of mark that can only be fully appreciated in viewing the original work. Cartman draws the eye and mind of the viewer into the image with remarkable consistency, a confident rhythm which is sensed and felt from the smallest scale work to the largest in the exhibition.

Towards Glenshee (Oil on board) is a beautiful example of finely tuned pictorial, structural and human elements within the landscape. A pure, bold expanse of aqua sky, undulating interlocking hills and geometric forms are punctuated by singularly decisive marks of russet. Warm accents of colour, typically rust, ochre or flashes of vibrant orange sit in contrast with a predominantly cool, contemplative palette. This restrained use of colour gives Cartman’s work a distinctive edge.

In Towards Glenshee the striking crescent of white feels like a signature and a sense of unexpected depth is created by larger forms in the far left foreground receding into a curvature of seeing and perceiving the landscape. On closer inspection the plane of sky reveals gentle stippling of paint, this together with areas such as a triangle of fluid layers in blue, green and smeared charcoal, encourage consideration of the qualities of the medium from flattened almost industrial treatment to delicate stains. Allowing the white ground to emerge beneath the horizon line creates an impression of luminous, Northern light often glimpsed behind a curtain of sky or dense seemingly immovable cloud. Human dwellings are suggested but largely subsumed in a complex arrangement of abstracted form. It is the feeling of pure blue that immediately draws the viewer and like a great piece of music the underpinning structure of the composition is seamless in its execution.

Usan Diptych

The large scale Usan Diptych is another superb example, an expanse of sky and scattered semi industrial/residential buildings that brings the eye masterfully to the centre of two equally balanced halves. The imprint of palette knife and roller in a geometric cascade create unexpected nuances in the dominant sky; comprised of two blue variations separated by a jagged band of white ground emerging from beneath the painted surface. The loose treatment of the foreground, opaque or stained pigment and animated gestural marks cleverly add to the viewer’s sense of perspective, while the sparing use of eye catching warm colour: ochre, yellow, russet and orange, placed with the utmost precision and instinct, achieve a perfectly balanced composition. In his Single Panel Tryptich Cartman presents a complex arrangement of interlocking man made architectural and semi organic forms testing the structural and compositional boundaries of the image. This exploration of the picture plane, paint quality, density and mark, allows the artist to create a multi-layered response to humankind in the environment.

Temple 5

Temple 5 is a fascinating work in the suggested relationship between human architecture and nature. The jutting apex of the building suggests a stark purity of intent and aspiration in its heightened perspective. The sharply defined vanishing point adds to the sense of human presence in the landscape; the outline of stone walls, tiny darkened window and shaded solidity contrasted with the more ephemeral smears of charcoal and ever present blue/grey sky. Delicate textures of drizzled turpentine and a light touch of ochre path invite closer inspection while sharp geometric accents of purple and linear orange trace the eye’s movement to the horizon line.

Castle Road

Stylistic contrast in works such as Castle Road where drafted, precise lines of architecture and tonal definition meet fluid paint handling and pure abstraction are convincingly balanced in visual counterpoint. This dynamic between design and spontaneous mark is exemplified in the reaction between pigment and board creating a shifting sky of bled ultramarine in Roccasecca. Here the white architectural façade of the building is juxtaposed with liquefied sky. Sharp linear perspective guides the eye into the image but it is colour and paint density that governs our emotional response to the image.

Outpost

Another highlight of the exhibition is Outpost, an image divided by a serpentine line between foreground and mid-ground. To the left of the composition, hard-edged abandoned structures in greyish blue and black contrast with large boulders, stones and viscerally sketched grass in ochre, tinged green, russet and orange. Treatment of the sky is poetically distilled and immediately tactile, stained grey beneath white, with a curvature of thickened paint bringing movement of cloud to the profound stillness and isolation of the scene. Human habitation and its figurative absence in Cartman’s compositions remains poised and enigmatic, an eternal dance between natural and human marks in the landscape. Throughout this latest body of work the artist delivers a sustained and potent exploration of the plastic elements of image making and his chosen subject, creating finely balanced compositions of expansive depth and insight.

© Georgina Coburn, 2013

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery
• Sam Cartman

CHRISTMAS 2012 at Kilomorack Gallery combines the work of established and emerging new artists.

EXHIBITING artists include Gerald Laing, Eugenia Vronskaya, Helen Denerley, Peter White, Christine Woodside, Illona Morrice, Laurence Broderick, Jane MacNeill, Kirstie Cohen, Patricia Cain, Sarah Carrington, Sam Cartman, Helen Fay, Lotte Glob, Helen Glassford, Allan MacDonald, Alan MacDonald, Henry Fraser and Madeline MacKay, with the range of work spanning the decorative to the transcendental.

Allan MacDonald - Scots Pine and Winter Squall

Allan MacDonald’s Scots Pine and Winter Squall (Oil on Board) is a wonderful example of the artist’s understanding of northern light and fluid handling of oils. The beautifully nuanced tonality and luminosity of snow is balanced with the warmth and wild movement of russet branches, swept by winter gales. An intensely subtle palette, together with patterns of light on the bark, foreground and breaking light in the animated sky, create an image of beauty and power in nature. The lone figure of the Scot’s Pine as an image of resilience at one with the environment is potently human and characteristic of the way that MacDonald’s landscape works embody a human mind perceiving the landscape rather than a scenic view.

The artist’s physical engagement with the natural world together with his exploration of the art of painting defines his technique, further distilled by contemplation of the divine in nature. MacDonald’s brush work directs the viewer into the rhythm at the core of the image; his considered use of colour in accents of yellow and red is more intensely felt because used sparingly, in vibrant contrast to the prevailing atmosphere of the season. This insistence on the presence of light in darkness and its elusive quality is the challenge and joy of painting, consistently present in MacDonald’s work. Featured as part of the Kilmorack Northern Exposure showcase at the Caledonian Club, London and exhibiting last month at the 2012 Discerning Eye exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London, where he was awarded the DE Chairman’s Purchase Prize and the Scotland Regional Prize, Allan MacDonald continues to be one of the foremost exponents of landscape painting in the UK precisely because he transcends the limitations of the genre.

Madeleine McKay - Caol

Madeline MacKay’s original prints are a striking addition to the gallery. Selected for the RSA New Contemporaries Exhibition (April/May 2013) and a recent graduate in BA (Hons) Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee, MacKay’s technical skill and treatment of subject present a fascinating investigation of the relationships between her ornithological subjects, human kind and environment. Caol (Collograph) exemplifies the artist’s layered treatment of the subject in the figure of a cormorant, its finely drawn articulated neck, akin to the calligraphic spontaneity of the artist’s ink drawings, tempered with shifting elements from the landscape itself.

Born in Northern Ireland and growing up in Caithness, MacKay’s approach to her subject feels further distilled in the more abstract Shale (Etching), possessing and expansive presence drawn directly from the Northern landscape. The artist’s land works display an affinity with the earliest cave paintings in the immediacy of drawn marks on stone and allude to indigenous understanding and interaction with the natural world. The delicacy of these images, the artist’s care and deliberation are very promising indeed.

Henry Fraser - Portrait of an Artist

Henry Fraser’s Portrait of an Artist (Acrylic on Board) presents an intriguing universal portrait emerging from a textured, earthy ground, scarred with drawn marks. Hands are clasped expectantly in front of the figure, collaged newsprint with the word “mapping” defining the arm, the printed cheek and face bisected by brilliant red in contrast to fine splatter and softer tones of pink, turquoise, yellow, peach and blue within the outline of the body. The strong linear definition of the face in naïve black together with intense shining eyes create a child-like presence with a depth of consciousness conveyed in the pupils like wells of experience. The individuality of the figure as inspiration also creates a universal dynamic of innocence and experience with collaged elements and variation of paint handling creating layers of potential interpretation within the work.

The larger scale work Tribe, a bold procession of figures on a vivid ground of blue alludes to conformity in its use of chalkboard black and white to define the human figure; identification and belonging seemingly taught. The rendering of the figure is deceptively simple and like all of Fraser’s work, abstraction serves a psychologically complex and expressive purpose.

Eugenie Vronskaya - Inverness Light

A work of suitable scale befitting the artist’s talent, Eugenia Vronskaya’s Inverness Light (Oil on Canvas) displays her adept handling of the medium in a play of light, form and colour that make an adjacent suite of Edinburgh city scenes seem pale by comparison. This is an image of a city that feels more like a safe harbour in great curvature of the bridge in the foreground, echoing the organic form of shadowy mountains and shifting cloud in blues, greens, yellow and ochre. It is an image of nature and burgeoning urbanity, a lone figure on the bridge the only human presence to be seen amongst a townscape of church spires infused with light, the River Ness brought to life in areas of white ground animated by Vronskaya’s confidently vibrant brushstrokes.

This painterly, energetic response is in sharp contrast to the Edinburgh scenes which by their nature exhibit none of the essential energy manifest in Inverness Light: a dynamic between man-made structures and nature’s elements. The element of light in Vronskaya’s best work arguably presents itself as an agent of contemplation whether in still life, portraiture, landscape or cityscape works; as much an investment in the art of painting as it is a compelling investigation of the chosen subject.

Alan MacDonald’s A Song to the Sea (Oil on Board) display’s the artist’s wit and precision in a finely executed painting of a woman in profile painted in the manner of an Old Master, open mouthed with a packet of Fisherman’s Friend lozenges beneath. This juxtaposition of popular culture and visual literacy characterises the artist’s work presenting, particularly in larger scale works, a labyrinth of references and internal connections; intuitive, cerebral, insightful, poignant and humorous.

Alan MacDonald - The Carriage of Figaro

The Carriage of Figaro (Oil on Board) is a fine example, as much a proposition as it is a painting, a delightfully ambiguous arrangement of truth and contradiction. The elongated landscape composition with golden popular song lyric text beneath inform the visual narrative, defining the relationship between a man and a woman; he in a ruff collar and black robe, she naked, apart from pearls in her hair and around her ankles. The “carriage” a play on the operatic marriage title is a lowly wooden palette, theatrically adorned with drapery, rapidly spinning wheels adding a dimension of surreality to an eternally fixed scene. The female figure is coquettishly arranged for visual display, hand on hip, toying with her hair, her leg extended with a golden rope tied to her toe, pulled in tension beyond the picture plane and counterbalanced by a ballast of weight behind the carriage, tethering it like the viewer’s gaze. The landscape beyond is steeped in shadow, fluidly painted trees and semi industrial buildings, out of time with the dress of the central protagonists.

The mysterious complexity of visual and written text contains a myriad of clues to the game and simultaneously universal identification with the human element within the work; conventions, behaviours and constraints. It is this tension and the clarity of MacDonald’s paint handling that are so completely beguiling, an invitation to unravel the riddle of the image and of ourselves in the process. MacDonald’s work is a dance, a negotiation and a theatrical play on text and image, uniquely reformed, visually potent and invigoratingly fresh.

Arguably the strongest works in the exhibition give the audience the gift of expanded perception sharing a commitment to the artist’s chosen medium and a desire to initiate a world of thought and imagination in the act of seeing.

© Georgina Coburn, 2012

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery

KILMORACK Gallery’s 15th Summer exhibition presents a strong showing of work by new and regular exhibiting artists.

THEY include Joyce W Cairns, Alan McGowan, Henry Fraser, Lizzie Rose, Lotte Glob, Sam Cartman, Colin Brown, Pat Semple RSW, Kirstie Cohen, Helen Denerley, Allan MacDonald, Eugenia Vronskaya, Mary Bourne, Charles MacQueen RSW, Peter White, James Newton Adams and Robert McAulay.

Alan McGowan - Back

Following the release of Alan McGowan’s superb visual essay, The Language of the Body, Figure Drawings in Four Chapters, Northern audiences have the opportunity to view some of the exceptional drawings and paintings featured in the artist’s publication first hand. Resoundingly the human body is the text and McGowan’s command and understanding of his subject, chosen medium and context are richly in evidence throughout. Immediately visceral and innately cerebral, this body of work sits within the canon of Western Art and the figurative tradition as a history of ideas lived visually.

The distillation of McGowan’s own visual language within this suite of drawings and paintings is a joy to behold. In Back i (Mixed media) the aura of the body as well as its physical mass are defined by a singular washed mark on paper demonstrating absolute precision, economy and totality. Elegantly linear contours and defining marks at the hip convincingly allow the viewer to read the axis of weight, not just in physical terms but the emotional gravitas of the figure.

This dynamic between abstraction and tactile physicality is one of the most compelling characteristics of the artist’s evolving work. Torso i (Oil on Board) is another magnificent example, a work as invested in the art of painting as it is in the body as a visual text. The heightened tonality of the painting references the work of artists such as Rembrandt, while the richly textural paint handling in thick impasto creates form and presence akin to Bacon. Like Rembrandt’s hanging carcasses, McGowan’s Torso i illuminates humanity in light and darkness; as monumental architects of ideas and vulnerable, mortal slabs of meat. The artist’s technical skills in relation to anatomy and paint handling are equally matched by his ability to transcend the personal and illuminate the universal experience of what it is to be human.

Alan McGowan - Recline

Recline (Mixed Media) is another beautiful example; the ribcage and hip defined in a series of master strokes coupled with charcoal lines of breath taking delicacy, reminiscent of Rodin’s drawings. The figure in its entirety is reimagined in the mind of the viewer; the head, for example, depicted in just a series of rapid and intense marks as visual triggers. We are given all the information we need not just to look but to see. The human body as a physical presence and as a set of ideas or associations is also exemplified by Two Skeletons (Mixed media), where the energy and vibrancy of drawn and washed marks from the internal structure of the bones radiates outwards; a timeless dance between the subject and the artist’s hand. McGowan’s works are life studies in the most expansive sense; creation and destruction, beginning and end contained in every vibrant, essential mark.

Sam Cartman - The Rock, Dumbarton

Sam Cartman’s The Rock, Dumbarton (Oil on board) combines formal design with the freshness of drawn marks in its depiction of a dominant outcrop of rock and human architecture. A starkly effective reduced palette and the artist’s paint-handling, from a planar, almost industrial treatment of some painterly surfaces, contrasted with residual charcoal or pencil marks and accents of bold gestural colour, create compositions of sophistication and balance. The way that man made and organic elements inform our reading of the work is a constant source of fascination and a defining stylistic element within Cartman’s abstracted industrial and rural landscapes. Catterline Coast 3 (Oil on board) is another wonderful example; the human dwelling on the cliff top dwarfed by the surrounding environment, perched on a landmass between sea and sky.

Joyce W. Cairns - Footdee Gospel Hall Studio Garden

Footdee Gospel Hall Studio Garden (Oil on board) by Joyce W Cairns is one of the highlights of the exhibition by one of the nation’s greatest living artists. The oriental, almost decorative treatment of the ground with its arrangement of birds, feeders and ornaments creates a heightened psychological space for the central female protagonist. Rooted in the Expressionist tradition and steeped in the artist’s personal iconography, this is a sharply articulate composition of cool blues, incandescent red, orange and bone white, revealing a subtle stylistic shift in the artist’s paint-handling.

The treatment of the figure is more gently defined, less linear and immediately confrontational in its arrangement within the composition. The mood is contemplative and reflective, though no less potent than the artist’s monumental figurative compositions.

The vibrant red ground of the painting is fertile with associations, a fluidly interior surface upon which the human figure, collected objects, birds and the signature motif of a cat open up a world of interpretation. Cairns skilfully renders a scene that is both dream-like and grounded in its own Surreality; a packet of mealworms spills over into the viewer’s space, everyday packaging pulling the observer back to the ground on which they stand. The presence of chosen found and personal objects often anchor a painting within a distinct time and place of vintage remembrance in the artist‘s work. Here the juxtaposition of objects – celebratory Christmas bauble, spotted cloud like forms, ghostly ribbons and twigs ambiguously growing out of (or penetrating) the ground surface – intensify the sense of unconscious and personal association rather than offering historic visual anchors. Species of bird; mythic, predatory and innocent song, reflect this intriguingly fluid dynamic of association in the composition.

It is, however, the female protagonist, recurrent motif of a domesticated hen nesting on her head, finger to the nipple, clutching an enormous ginger cat like offspring that is the central focus of the painting. As the cat stretches beyond maternal grasp trying to attack a nearby bird the idea of nurture and nature are brought into visual conflict.

The viewer is drawn in by internal architecture of the painting, having been attracted initially by the resonant, luminous colour and seemingly decorative arrangement of figure, fauna and objects. As we scatter feed on the paintings pictorial elements a deeper truth or unease emerges, typical of the way that Cairns’ paintings transcend the personal and powerfully articulate the human condition. The artist’s distilled visual language moves from darkness to illumination in the act of seeing, bringing all of her knowledge and experience to bear in a single image and leading the viewer’s eye and mind compellingly into the work.

Pat Semple - The Guardians of The Night

Pat Semple’s large scale landscape Summer Orkney (Oil on Canvas) presents an almost mythic expanse of sky and cloud in a harmonic, uplifting complimentary palette of yellow, pinks, blues and purples. The roughly stippled brushwork and delicate layering of hue accented with deep purple give the whole work strength and intricacy. A smaller work, Guardians of the Night, depicting a female head flanked by two attendant spirits is like a hymn to colour with all the luminosity of stained glass.

The fluid brushwork gives the painting a dream-like quality tempered with the vibrant purity of the artist’s chosen palette. It is a beautiful, intriguing and sonorous work reminiscent of 19th century Symbolists in its treatment of the human figure combined with mythic elements of the mind. It is, however, the artist’s signature paint handling and use of colour that makes this intimate, interior work truly sing off the gallery wall and into the viewer’s consciousness.

Lizzie Rose - Sea Island Line

Argyll-based artist Lizzie Rose has contributed a beautifully distilled series of mixed media works to the exhibition. In Flower Lines bewitchingly articulate drawn marks and delicate washes create a feeling of energy and presence within an incredibly subtle and skilfully rendered composition. Rose illustrates why sometimes a whisper in visual terms is infinitely more powerful than a shout and this idea expands magnificently in her poetic treatment of the landscape. Sea Island Line is a fine example, a singular line of distant horizon and mountainous peak between a mass of steely blue sky and ocean.

Rose captures the unique quality of light in the Scottish landscape in her translucent, opaque washes of acrylic together with the energy and dynamism of nature in the artist’s direct linear response in pencil, charcoal or pastel, clearly seen and felt in Pale Island Cloud. Although of a modest scale the intensity of line in the image expands resoundingly beyond the frame. Like the Canadian artist Emily Carr, Rose is absolutely at one with her chosen environment and this sense of connection is exemplified in every drawn and painted mark. Grey Tree, with its transparent washes and directional lines of force, definition in reverse through white drawn marks rather than dark, give the image an ethereal quality akin to Carr’s painterly reverence for the natural world of her beloved British Columbia.

Lizzie Rose - Grey Tree

A larger scale mixed media work, Cloud Moon Mountain (Acrylic, pencil and oil pastel), is brimming with promise in terms of the potential scale of Rose’s work.Barest washes of blue and umber together with the power and deliberation of drawn marks create an incredibly vibrant and expansive image, a place of the mind inhabited by the artist and viewer alike. This combination of contemplation, reverence and visceral, immediate response to the environment is magnificently balanced in Rose’s best work and bodes well for future development.

It is exciting to see the quality of work in Kilmorack’s 15th summer show both from its regularly exhibiting artists and new artists to the gallery such as Pat Semple and Lizzie Rose. There is much to be enjoyed and savoured in this exhibition by artists at the forefront of Scottish Contemporary Art.

© Georgina Coburn, 2012

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery

ALLAN MacDonald’s latest body of work, The Silence and the Storm, together with new work by Lynn McGregor, inspire contemplation of the human eye perceiving the Northern landscape.

THE pairing of these two artists is surprisingly dynamic, and the stylistic contrast between them heightens awareness of their unique qualities in terms of paint handling and composition.

Allan MacDonald - An Oak Withstands, Tree of Light and Shadows

Since his commanding solo show Until The Day Break at Kilmorack in August 2010. Allan MacDonald’s work has continued to evolve. Imminent (Oil on Canvas) illustrates beautifully the artist’s direct response to nature in a shifting expanse of cloud over a low sea, deeper shadows illuminated by light and a signature patch of blue above.

Within the sky a myriad of nuanced greys reflect an expanded palette, contributing to the feeling of movement and life within the work. It is the inner life of MacDonald’s landscapes that elevates them beyond expectations of the genre, driven by his engagement with paint and the natural environment.

The profound subtlety found in Imminent is further distilled in An Oak Withstands, Tree of Light and Shadows, appropriately hung in the architectural centre of the gallery space where the altar would have once stood. Monumental and supremely delicate in its many layers of pigment and gestural marks, it is a visionary work which has its place in a distinctly Northern Romantic tradition, an image of man and God in nature.

The oak at the centre of the composition is immediately figurative in presence. The range of colour within the work is extraordinary and every mark on the canvas strives towards light. This sense of illumination through light and shadow is at the thematic core of the work, across the trunk the shadow of branches can be seen; signs of growth and age, knowledge and inevitable decay that define the human condition.

The entire composition is wholly unified and the eye is quietly drawn into the work by an interplay of colour, light and form that is ethereal. An Oak Withstands, Tree of Light and Shadows is aspirational and mesmerising, a beautifully measured composition that embodies ideas of strength and fragility.

Allan MacDonald - As The Voice of Many Waters

If An Oak Withstands, Tree Of Light and Shadows is a prayer, then As The Voice Of Many Waters (Oil on Board) is a work of exuberant praise. The vibrancy of MacDonald’s brushwork in this image of waves hitting the headland has its own rhythm and intensity; a scraped surface of white foam, receding field of blue and mist of salt spray filling the senses of the viewer entirely as we stand on shore and precipice.

This adept handling of the medium is also reflected in North Coast Headland (Oil on Canvas) in its bold division of the canvas in form and light, a solid mass of headland articulated by resonant brushstrokes and flashes of green, pink orange and yellow emerging in sky and land. The semi-abstract treatment of the subject conveys the moment experienced with immediacy by both artist and viewer.

Allan MacDonald - North Coast Headland

The Sun Rises, It Goes Down (Oil on canvas) is another good example with its freer brush work, the sun and its reflection glowing orange, white canvas allowed to shine through in a way that feels like a dual hymn to nature and to painting. And The Moon Turned Red (Oil on Board) pushes this idea further still, a thick ground of impasto, light beginning to glimmer across the encrusted surface.

There are many highlights to be savoured here; the fluidity and grace of Winter Nocturne, the glorious promise of light and serenity of The Sun Rises, Winter Solstice, the choreography of air, earth and water in Sea Shadow and the turbulent sweep of waves and shoreline in Storm Coast, extraordinarily realised on an intimate scale. Like the work of Canadian artist Tom Thomson which continues to inspire the artist, MacDonald consistently redefines our interpretation of the Northern landscape and our place within it.

Lynn McGregor - Island Trees

Lynn McGregor’s works in acrylic on board demonstrate her ability to balance elements of spontaneity and structure within her semi-abstract compositions. Island Trees is a good example, a strong image created in sweeping strokes and blocks of colour with a reduced palette of blue, purple, green and grey. The fluidity of under painting and the finer texture of brush and drawn marks are retained in many of McGregor’s works, contrasting with geometric form and the characteristically flattened paint texture of acrylics.

Lynn McGregor - Sweeping Fields

In Sweeping Fields this reduction of the landscape feels like a marriage of design and instinct, the curvature of the horizon calligraphic in its simplicity. Broad, flat gestural strokes work beautifully in counterpoint with bold concentrations of hue, the composition held convincingly by the artist’s understanding of plastic elements. The landscape is suggested and felt rather than seen.

Between The Lochs brings unexpected luminescence to McGregor’s handling of pigment in layers of blues, grey and brown. The imaginative concentration of colour is achieved in subtle layers within a bold formal composition. On closer inspection brushstrokes become visible; yellow and green washes of under-painting that bring a quality of iridescence to planes of form and horizontal bands evocative of the landscape. Initially it is colour that compellingly draws the eye into the work, then the artist’s skill in composition that invites further contemplation.

Lynn McGregor - Shore Growth

Shore Growth displays an interesting variation of surface textures including sections of decalcomania and rectangular clouds of enclosed brushstrokes. In contrast the looser overall handling of works such as Three Shores and Spring Seaweed are less convincing. Arguably McGregor’s strongest works in the exhibition are those where formal design and instinctual mark carry equal visual and associative weight. Anchored exemplifies this approach in the single drawn line defining the headland, bold planes of form, fluid sweep of brushstrokes and pure assured blues of the artist’s chosen palette; the immediate response of drawn and painted marks are tempered by formal elements of design to create a finely balanced composition.

While the hanging of this two-handed show is episodic in terms of each artist’s individual statement, it succeeds in encouraging a dialogue between the two artist’s work, heightening appreciation of the unique qualities of each. This is inspiring work defined by each artist’s investment in their chosen discipline and their passionate engagement with the natural environment.

© Georgina Coburn, 2012

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery

THIS inspired pairing of two artists of equal intensity in their engagement with subject and paint handling is full of potential discoveries.

DAVID Cook’s landscape and still life works and Henry Fraser’s figurative paintings demonstrate that creative vision is as alive in Kilmorack Gallery’s programming as it is in the studios of the artists it represents.

David Cook - Blizzard

The visceral potency of David Cook’s Blizzard (Oil On Canvas) brings forces of nature together with impassioned handling of paint in bold, broad strokes, thick impasto and a complimentary palette of blues, purples, yellow and ochre. While elements of landforms are visible in the low slung sea and headland in the fore ground, it is the monumental sky which dominates the composition. It is here that the emotional gravitas of Cook’s work can be found, rooted in Abstract Expressionism and in direct response to the landscape.

David Cook - Lochgelly Loch

Reminiscent of early Kandinsky, Lochgelly Loch (Oil On Canvas) is another superb example; a pure engagement of the senses in sweeping gestural brushmarks which reflect the soul of the work in water and sky. The vivid, joyous palette of pink, orange, yellow, blues, greens and deep alizarin together with variation of mark, create a finely balanced composition of form and feeling.

This quality is also exemplified in Harvest (Oil On Board), where an abundance of yellow and orange coupled with cool luminous blue are brought together in abstract form. Held by a universal vibration of life-affirming colour, the sky nestled in the hollow of the land feels like a vessel for the soul. The formal division of the composition and strength of feeling that the palette imbues is stunningly profound in its simplicity.

Sun Splitting Through (Oil On Board) is almost calligraphic in its signature treatment of light; three articulated marks in yellow which unite dividing strata of the composition (sky, sea and land) and elements of air, water and earth. The relative stillness of the ground, tempered with watery sweeping strokes of blue and pink is divined by the introduction of gestural marks which lead the mind in contemplation.

David Cook - Horizon Line

A smaller square composition, Horizon Line (Oil On Board), further illustrates the artist’s immersion in his subject and the art of painting. Here an intense line of dark ultramarine with layers of cadmium red, yellow and impasto white reduce the image to pure expression through colour and form. Cook applies layers of pigment to the image and scrapes them back to reveal unexpected vibrancy.

Wheat Fields (Oil On Board) is equally intense in its beauty, with a range of colour taken from the artist’s entire palette. Even in an image of relatively intimate scale the investment of energy in every mark and balance of colour are powerfully resonant. Cook’s work is an exciting combination of raw, intuitive energy and deliberation. The degree to which this dynamic can be further distilled will define future work and hopefully lead to his next solo exhibition.

The choreography of movement in Big Sky in swathes of purple and flurries of white and yellow reflects the way in which Cook transforms our vision of the Scottish landscape as scene to an interior journey. The earth itself is anchored to the base of the composition with the imagination and spirit expanded in the dominant sky. While the proximity of Joan Eardley’s Catterline to the artist’s own studio is bound to draw comparisons, the emotional weight of Cook’s work is be found not in laden impasto but the vibrancy of his palette. His vision draws us not into the swell of the ocean or the grit of sodden earth but upwards into the element of air and sky which dominate his land based compositions.

Henry Fraser’s naïve treatment of the human figure is both compassionate and revelatory in its abstraction. With none of the trappings of conventional portraiture, Fraser strips humanity back in pictorial, psychological and emotive terms, conveying profound sensitivity in his paint handling and choice of composition. With striking economy, Fraser is capable of incredible delicacy and insight.

The Great Escape (Acrylic On Board) is a beautiful example; the large faces of two children in a field, turned to the viewer in round-eyed innocence dominating the image. Their childlike simplicity is tempered by detailed treatment of the painted surface; specked accents of gold amongst the spikey imprint of grasses and immediately tactile stippled brushwork, the barest wash of blue under-painting reflected in characteristically small but universally expressive eyes. Varying treatment of burnt umber gives the whole image an earthy, elemental quality, while human faces appear ethereal, like childhood remembered, two birds in the distance echoing flight of imagination and freedom in nature.

Henry Fraser - The Well

Fraser’s humanity as an artist is also revealed in two deeply affecting images; The Well and Everybody Knew But Nobody Said. Abstraction of the figure into bare pictorial elements heightens the emotional resonance of each work. In The Well, placement of the figure and dominance of the head illuminated in white is starkly framed by dark umber hair and clothing. Psychologically the space is compressed and a single oval mark in the lower right hand corner, the well of the title, expands like a threat in the mind’s eye. Anxiety is concentrated in the protagonist’s eyes using the barest marks, and like the figure, the feeling swallows the viewer whole.

In Everybody Knew But Nobody Said a lone female figure in a green dress, her dark hair and eyes defined in blue, turns her eye in confrontation to the viewer who is complicit in her gaze. The sadness and recognition in this work are palpable and Fraser skilfully renders the figure in a rapid smear of marks and bold form, set against an empty psychological ground. Colour has drained out of the world and we stand eye to eye with the protagonist in knowledge and experience of betrayal shared.

One of the most daringly effective works in the show is Hope, which utilises the barest suggestion of pictorial elements in the pursuit of the most expansive idea imaginable. Recognisably a human face but still unformed, the artist defines space for a smiling mouth with unprimed board, eyes and other features are suggested but unfinished. We see a glimmer in the white face and red cheeks, of possibility, of life still to be lived in a child-like figure whose lightness against a wash of umber illuminates the whole world.

Hard bare board, a raw everyday material, forms an unlikely halo around her head. The equality between the artist’s technique and the idea of hope is unexpectedly revelatory. Similarly an emotive state is beautifully realised in Penitent, where bare board and marks of the brush rendered like flagellation represent realisation of the idea through inspired paint handling.

Henry Fraser - Mither Tongue

Mither Tongue echoes John Bellany in its stark procession of figures clothed in blackened umber. One appears cloaked in a shawl, another in an incised striped nightdress, their heads swathed ambiguously in either bandages or bonnets, eyes fixed penetratingly on the viewer like an outsider stumbled into a small village. Mouths thinly drawn and stitched shut, if present at all, are resoundingly mute in an image which sits uneasily and timelessly in the mind between historical past and cultural present.

Henry Fraser - The Writing's on the Wall

The Writing’s On The Wall is another fascinating work, the figure isolated in the lower right hand corner of the composition and architecturally confined within a tomb-like frame with the mark of a cross overhead. The surface itself feels aged in intricate layers of acrylic on board, splattered, scraped and weathered and the fate of the protagonist pre-ordained, no mouth to speak with a voice of one’s own. The confinement and inevitability within this work is both illuminating and, like all of Fraser’s figurative work, uncompromisingly humane in its acknowledgement of the human condition.

Celebrating its fifteenth birthday in June, Kilmorack continues to be one of the most astute galleries in the country in the presentation of new work. This is a dynamic and powerful show which successfully challenges expectation by two artists equally engaged with their chosen subject and medium.

© Georgina Coburn, 2012

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery

THE Kilmorack Gallery Christmas 2011 exhibition presents an invigorating combination of new work.

REGULAR exhibitors include Allan MacDonald, Alan MacDonald, Colin Brown, James Newton Adams, Kirstie Cohen, Helen Denerley, Lynn McGregor, James McCallum, Henry Fraser and Claire Harkness, while Joyce W Cairns, David Cook and Eduard Bersudsky are new artists to the gallery. The quality of work throughout is exceptional and gives an exciting taster of wider showcases of individual work as part of the 2012 exhibition programme.

Joyce W Cairns - North East Village

It is wonderful to see one of the most important living figures in the history of Scottish Art highlighted in this exhibition with the inclusion of work by Joyce W Cairns. North East Village (Watercolour) exemplifies her command of figurative composition, influenced by German Expressionist masters such as Max Beckmann. The architecture of the image confines and defines the figures within, creating real psychological and emotional depth.

The strength of composition in Cairns’s work is compelling, and her crafting of the image absolutely masterful. The geometric arrangement of the cat in the foreground and framing of the central figure between a lighthouse and totemic image of self binds the central protagonist to her surroundings within a formal triptych design. The image is rendered with absolute clarity of line, a stark watercolour tinged with steely blue, red and ochre accents that places the human subject and condition centre stage.

This enduring quality is also very much in evidence in the artist’s figurative work on a much larger scale in oils; The Deadly Wars (1993), Irma (1994-5) or Sword Beach (1996), seen as part of War Tourist, major retrospective of the artist’s work at the Aberdeen Art Gallery in 2006, one of the most significant exhibitions by a Scottish artist in the last decade.

Joyce W Cairns - A Winter's Tale

Throughout her career Cairns has developed her own unique iconography drawn from the area around her home in Footdee on the North East coast. A Winter’s Tale, like much of the artist’s work, is richly symbolic and intimate in its psychology. Steeped in the grey of northern winter skies, bold ultramarine and cadmium red resiliently define each of the three figures. Again the central portrait is flanked by two attending figures resembling an altarpiece; on the left a nude woman within the statuesque body of a predatory bird whose talons seem to reach toward the ear of the central protagonist and on the right a naïve totemic figure whose pigeon-toed awkwardness and child-like bob are suggestive of youth. Experience weighs heavily on the central portrait, instinctively modelled on the artist’s own features. The female figure sits bound in a red corset, the triangular face of a cat nestled symbolically in her lap and the speckled pattern of her blouse like falling snowflakes of an internalised winter.

Alan MacDonald’s beguiling figurative works are another highlight of the exhibition. In Lumos (Oil on linen), a girl in hooped skirt period costume dominates the space; she gazes beyond the viewer, her tiered dress revealing a series of trapdoors and a surreal juxtaposition of objects within; lollipop, scissors, golden soap (?) and glass bottle. Like the string of coloured fairy lights she holds between her fingers, arms out stretched, she appears luminous against a deep grey background; half abandoned fairground, half antique landscape.

Alan MacDonald - Lumos

At the base of the composition are the words – written in a tinge of gold linking text to object – “This is the day your life will surely change”, a poignant expression of human aspiration that feels linked with the fairy lights she grasps in her hands. The middle layer of her dress contains a pattern of numbers of indecipherable code and in the trim of her skirt the text “Somewhere in the depths of my mind there is a warm place, there olive trees grow, surrounded by terraces of grapevines” defies the cold palette and isolated world she inhabits. Painted with the precision of an old master, MacDonald’s work is, like that statement at the base of the painting, an imaginative journey of free association for the viewer.

Allan MacDonald - Pink Sky Over Northern Hills

Allan MacDonald’s Fionaven, Winter Sundown (Oil on Canvas) is a particularly fine example of his work, a blaze of pink light illuminating the sky and the luminosity of yellow cottage rooftops against a blue foreground whiteout of snow. Broad confident brushstrokes and a palette emblazoned with light define the semi-abstract composition with economy and lucidity. Stripped of detail the scene is transformed by the formal design of the canvas and the resonance of colour and light drawn directly from the artist’s experience of the landscape.

Colin Brown - Bardot

Colin Brown’s beautifully composed mixed media collages combine accidental marks with formal design elements, fragments of text and images drawn from advertising and popular culture. At his best Brown balances an assault of visual imagery with contemplative space, and Bardot is a great example. The viewer is presented with multiple layers of imagery; the iconic actress and sex symbol, a trajectory of billboard-like sunlight, a 19th century illustration of two exotically sinister birds, their blue plumage and red eyes echoing the dominant palette of the work in an attitude of both courtship and combat. The artist’s visual language is pure POP ART, seduction and interrogation at the same time, and this ambiguity communicated in the balance of visual elements and ideas within each work is a major strength. Ever present is the human mark, energetic paint splatter coupled with mass media design creating vital tension in the work.

A series of square compositions based on famous figures Orbison, The Beatles and Lee Marvin, although magnificently executed, feel more self conscious, relying on celebrity interest rather than creating an imaginative and contemplative space for the viewer to inhabit. Layers of imagery are densely packed to the point where as a series they become visually repetitive in spite of their very accomplished technique, losing the element of repose exemplified by the Bardot image. Brown, like Warhol, is at his most potent when turning the visual language of Pop culture in on itself rather than relying on a fan base to lure the eye.

Bersudsky - Raven

Created from burr elm, Eduard Bersudsky’s sculptures seem to morph mystically and organically out of the woodgrain. His Mechanical Raven ringing a brass bell feels monumental both in its robust form and in its immediate associations with death. Although most strongly associated with Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, the narrative skill present in his sculpture and perhaps most powerfully in his drawings, demonstrate the role of the artist as witness to timeless cycles of human behaviour. Mechanical Raven is a symbolic work, but it is also a personal one as we are reminded even as we smile at its ingenious mechanisation that the bell eventually tolls for us all. There is dark comedy in Bersudsky’s raven, but also an essential truth.

David Cook - Violent Sea

David Cook’s extraordinary paint-handling is exemplified by both Violent Sea and Glowing Flowers (Oil on board), leaving the viewer hungry for the full scale of the artist’s work to be revealed. Thick impasto and the vibrancy of yellow and orange against muted green in Glowing Flowers feel like a celebration of life force. The physicality of painting on board, together with fluent handling of pigment and choice of palette, create a statement of beauty imbued with struggle, not in terms of Romanticism but essential vitality, effectively putting the life back into still life.

Violent Sea is equally impressive, with a variety of mark that is both powerfully sensitive and insightful, rendering the foreground in scratched drawn marks on deep purple in contrast to highlights of Naples yellow and ochre. The artist’s intuitive treatment of the surface reveals the emotional gravitas of the Northern landscape.
With its fluid brushwork contained within a canvas of relatively intimate size, Cook’s The Bay, feels like a concentrated corner of an image belonging to a much greater expanse of work. Overall the introduction of the artist’s work gives an intoxicating glimpse of exhibitions of future work on a larger scale. It is always wonderful to discover new paths in familiar artist’s work and the work of new artists and Kilmorack Gallery’s latest exhibition contains a gratifying abundance of both.

Open Thursday- Sunday, 11am-5.30pm.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

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• Kilmorack Gallery

THE PAIRING of two of Kilmorack’s regularly exhibiting artists, Charles MacQueen RSW and James Hawkins, with exciting new figurative work by Alan MacDonald give the viewer plenty to savour in the gallery’s latest show.

Exhibiting in the United States and Holland, Dundee-trained Alan MacDonald has clearly distilled his own unique visual language in an impressive debut at Kilmorack. This is sophisticated, visually literate work both in terms of technical execution and multi-layered exploration of ideas, infused with humour and defined with precision.

Alan MacDonald - A Master and Margarita

While there are many art historical influences to be seen in this work, MacDonald remains his own man, in full knowledge of the canon, playfully seducing the viewer with familiarity of style then subverting expectation of traditional narrative. Displacement of elements; the surreal juxtaposition of classical and industrial architecture, the adornment and status of costume with utilitarian functionality and the presence of consumer branding/ Pop elements in the same frame as traditions of historical painting and portraiture thankfully never allow the audience to get too comfortable.

The work is archetypally Northern in its interior quality, the dark grounds and focussed illumination reminiscent of Flemish masters, the looser paint handling, particularly in the landscape backgrounds, akin to Dutch landscape and maritime painting of the 18th century. The unforgiving choice of oil on board makes the sublime delicacy of the painted surface all the more impressive.

Alan MacDonald - Bullfighters Never Know When To Quit

The beguiling Bullfighters Never know When To Quit is an excellent example, a figurative group of seated male matador and classical female nude with an attendant leopard at their feet, all enigmatically focused on a scene beyond the frame. In the background three blazing buildings infuse the contemplative stillness with vitality, imminent danger and movement. This is contrasted with the delicate play of light between three aspects of self, radiant and luminous as a Titian Venus. The paint handling in this image is infused with care and vulnerability, while the presence of a line of song lyric; ”welcome back my friends to the show that never ends” provides an ironic counterfoil to the conscious theatrical staging of the composition. This humour is characteristic of the way in which MacDonald visually stages his own subterfuge, an admirable quality in work with a decidedly intellectual edge.

The tension in these works is compelling, and their real beauty lies in the fluid nature of association which imaginatively expands the mind of the viewer along multiple pathways of interpretation. These are works not just of a moment but of lifetimes, a real rarity in the world of contemporary art. MacDonald’s skilful and intelligent manipulation of plastic and ideological elements can be seen in the compositional strength of a large scale work, Whims of Desire.

Alan MacDonald - Whims of Desire

Here a young woman stands in the tiered architecture of her black domed gown, tethered to something or someone we cannot see, a number of openings in her skirt revealing a punch spring, ball and chain, the unfurling script of a popular Joplin lyric; “lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”, a Magritte-like spoon and a bouquet of white flowers suspended from her dress. At her feet a white monkey eyes the open red “Kettle sweet chilli flavour” crisps packet in her hand while she gazes past us impassively, a smile dawning in the corner of her mouth.

The elegance and restraint of her clothing, symbolic presence of the monkey, together with the iconography of burning buildings in the background convey psychological and sexual tension. The composition itself is a powerful pyramid structure, aligned with light, centring on her pale skin, white ribbon of script and rope tether. Within this triangle are multiple triggers for the imagination.

In Venus On Wheels a codified genre and its associative meanings are temporarily displaced by the presence of a contemporary branded object. The Classical Goddess and symbol of beauty of the title is being hauled on a cheap looking trolley, the familiar striped design of a Tesco bag a Pop prop within an image spanning multiple timeframes. The deep umber background of “dark satanic mills” heightens the illumination of the consumer object and the female nude.

Luna is an intriguing and ambiguous image of femininity, beautifully rendered. The head and shoulders portrait is suitably enigmatic, aligned with the symbolic associations of the moon and her phases, linked with the element of water and tides. The three-quarters profile – like the trajectory of all of MacDonald‘s work – conceals and reveals. There is implied confinement in the twisted twine and safety pins which secure and tether her costume in silvery textured gossamer blue, a hue to match her eyes. Attached to one line of twine the script “fly me to the moon” introduces a Pop element /humorous Sinatra twist to what initially reads like an encoded Renaissance society portrait.

Work in the exhibition by James Hawkins shows signs of potential development in the more experimental abstract pieces such as Strath Nimhe Above Leckmelm (Acrylic on paper) with fragments of vibrant coloured paint creating a landmass. Suspended in the frame the shadow gives the collaged layers of pigment a map like quality.

James Hawkins - Strath Nimhe above Leckmelm

An adjacent work, Ben Mor Coigach, utilises a similar technique, but due to the arrangement of form and colour lends itself to a more literal interpretation of landscape, a characteristic Hawkins scene of mountains and water. These two works appear to encompass dual trajectories in the artist’s current practice; the desire for evolution through experimentation and reliance on painterly formula.

Sanded acrylics on canvas such as Loch A Bhraoin feel as if the artist is grappling with his own technique in an attempt to transcend stylistic limitations; however, what is revealed is simply a textural, painted surface. Compositional structure is absent in this work and as a result the eye moves indiscriminately around the surface with nothing to draw the mind into the image and hold it there. As a stage of evolution the sanded acrylic works are interesting but beg further development in terms of the essential relationship between technique and ideas.

Hawkins’s drawings and other works on paper reveal immediacy of mark and draughtsmanship, demonstrating that the artist is capable of pushing the boundaries of his own practice; however, there is visible hesitation in this show, rather than bold, unflinching commitment to go where the process leads. Once commercially established an artist will always have their style card in their back pocket, but to continue to lead the market they must challenge and engage the audience by challenging themselves.

Charles McQueen - The Magician's Trick

Charles MacQueen’s work also charts familiar stylistic territory in this latest showing with some exquisite examples of his mixed media work, among them Souvenir Shop, Rajasthan, Offering and Magician’s Trick. MacQueen’s command of colour, texture and mark is ever present; dreamlike delicacy and structural integrity defining his best compositions.

This is a fascinating show of contrasting styles, raising expectation about potential developments in Kilmorack’s regularly exhibiting artists and introducing an exciting and dynamic new artist to the gallery’s audience. It is an absolute pleasure to become lost in the multi-layered nature of Alan MacDonald’s work, encouraging repeat viewings of this extraordinary show.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery

THREE years in the making, this latest solo show of drawings and paintings by Eugenia Vronskaya is distinctive for its emotional resonance and unflinching exploration of technique.

Diverse paint handling on canvas and slate, exceptional draughtsmanship and multi-layered investigation of the painted surface make this an absorbing and insightful show. The theme of the river is a powerful and unifying theme running throughout the exhibition, reflecting the artist’s physical perspective overlooking the River Glass and as an expression of humanity, vulnerable to time and change.

Eugenia Vronskaya - A river runs through

In many ways all of Vronskaya’s images, whether landscape, still life or portraiture, are meditative reflections of this interior world. It is the inner landscape of her work beyond appearances that is most compelling and self-reflexive, altering our perception of the everyday and potently illuminating the difference between looking and seeing.

The artist’s self portrait Which is it? (Oil on canvas) is a fascinatingly fractured composition, full of ambiguity. Two images of the artist emerge, one confined vertically to the far left of the composition, the other inhabiting our main view, an interior semi-abstracted by a dominant block of red, a view of bare trees from a window, dead bird on the sill. The armour-like design of the artist’s scarf and the contrast in paint handling between these two selves, particularly the looser handling of the main frame of visual reference, causes the viewer to question what is the reflection and what the truth of the image – and of self. Use of mirrors within Vronskaya’s self portraits are multidimensional not just in relation to reflections of self, but in the act of seeing.

Another self portrait, Reflection (Oil on canvas), displays the artist’s ability to depict play of light, not just as an optical effect but in the service of illumination. The artist’s early training as an icon painter has actively informed her understanding of the painted surface throughout her career, and this treatment of light permeates all of her work in unique and subtle ways.

Eugenia Vronskaya - Reflection (Oil on Canvas)

The exquisitely shifting palette of translucent gold, ochre and umber reflected in glass, mirror and brass presents interplay of surfaces from bare canvas to rich pigment, seeing through and beyond objects or surfaces and going within. Every element of the composition is structurally balanced, successfully directing the eye into the work and encouraging us to remain there in contemplation. Like many of the artist’s best works the raw energy of sketched elements remain in the composition, and the variation of paint handling and mark also communicate the elusiveness of painting and capturing self. In this image the artist’s self-portrait is held within the mirror, golden, fleeting and ethereal.

Akin to the canvas itself, windows and doorways are also threshold spaces in many of Vronskaya’s works. Self Portrait (Oil on canvas) is a potent example, the figure of the artist dominating a grey interior, her direct gaze in shadow. Colour and light are deftly controlled in this image which is as bleak as it is beautiful. The modelling of the face and the stance of the figure, shoulders rendered in just a few spare lines of ultramarine, are absolutely masterful. While the tree outside lies bare, beyond it is a door of iridescent cadmium yellow, suggesting the possibility of an entirely different psychological and emotional state beyond the confines of the room, a statement of resilience and hope. Painting is a witness but also the source of transformation.

Eugenia Vronskaya - A Few Of My Favourite Things

Vronskaya excels at portraiture, actively expanding the genre and A Few Of My Favourite Things (Oil on canvas) is a good example, an assemblage of the artist’s own personal iconography with the figure just visible as a line of the back and a pair of hovering eyes, separated from the body beneath a high horizon line. The artist is present and absent at the same time within an accumulation of everyday objects upon a white ground.

Part still life, part landscape of the soul, the image is rendered with all the immediacy and energy of a sketch. Use of colour serves the structure of the composition extremely well; three accents of red in the base of a lamp in the foreground, a bottle top and the inside of a shoe, opposed by acidic green and emerald, with flesh tones around the blue eyes, in the conch shell and colouring a pair of disembodied feet balancing the overall design.

A portrait of national importance which ought to be on national display, Vronskaya’s magnificent painting of the fashion designer and couturier Sandra Murray conveys the stature and dignity of the sitter, not merely in her costume but in her presence. Painted on a pure white ground the elegant line of Murray’s hat and gown, a silhouette of darkened purple, presents an image akin to an earlier century of society portraits or high contrast black and white fashion photography.

It is however the strength, determination and humanity in Murray’s face which provides a counterfoil to the artifice of dress and of portraiture. Like the subject’s adornment, the portrait conceals and reveals the sitter and the artist. Intriguingly within the contours of the lower half of the gown the profile of John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X sits beautifully as a seamless element of the design.

The designer’s hand is placed protectively in relation to the figure as if it were a child, the head of Sargent’s muse in a womblike position. It is an image of an extraordinary woman and of creativity which reveals the inner beauty of the subject beyond a world of appearances.

The Morning After (Oil on canvas) illustrates the way in which Vronskaya invests still life with human presence. The window view with its arrangement of glass objects spaced apart from each other are rendered in greys, emerald green, purple and lemon yellow, the shadows of glass in green clashing with blue in the foreground. Light in this work sharpens the edges of the glass and fine vertical white marks feel as though they have been cut into the surface of the painting. There is a sense of stillness and isolation in this work with the river beyond bearing silent witness to the interior scene.

Eugenia Vronskaya - The Morning After (Oil On Canvas)

The dynamic of human life within the still life, in light and in shadow can also be seen in Before The Storm. (Oil on canvas). The horizontal composition and placement of objects upon the window sill is divided by shifting light, effectively halved midpoint with a figurative statue. The cool blue and green with accents of red in the comical fake teeth and pink interior of the conch shell create tension, conflicting temperatures of hue which are subtly echoed in the landscape outside. The gathered fabric to the left of the painting feels like a cloud unfurling, contributing to the emotional unease of the image. The atmosphere of the scene stands on a knife edge and the viewer is held in anticipation by inanimate objects and elements of colour and form.

There are many smaller works which also beg closer inspection such as the beautifully fluid self portrait I meet My Shadow in The Deepening (Oil on Canvas), the dialogue of anthropomorphised objects in Three Kings (Oil on slate), Your gift from the sea (Oil on Canvas), reminiscent of the dreamlike pastels and watercolours of Odilon Redon, and the deeply personal, softly textured and symbolically loaded The Expectation of a Miracle (Oil on Canvas).

The diversity of paint handling and varying scale of work is both fractious and essential in this show, displaying a range of enquiry that will shape and distil future work. A series of images in particular that beg further exploration are a suite of female nudes on canvas and slate – Trusting the river, a semi immersion of the figure in the natural element of water.

A river runs through is a significant milestone in the artist’s life and oeuvre, displaying her command of the medium of oils and sustained commitment to the art of painting. The finest works in this exhibition convey extraordinary intensity and emotional depth, created by an artist possessing a deep understanding of pictorial elements and of the human condition.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

Links

• Eugenia Vronskaya
• Kilmorack Gallery

FOLLOWING his highly successful collaboration and exhibition with poet Jon Miller at an talla solais, Ullapool, last August 2010, Peter White’s current solo show at Kilmorack Gallery presents the viewer with a typically beguiling combination of presence and absence within the same frame. Distilled into a series of iconographic objects, the art of Peter White evokes meditative stillness, the seeming emptiness of vessels such as bowls, books, hats or garments transformed by the artist’s rendering into objects of spiritual contemplation.

Peter White's Garment 2

White’s palette is characteristically subtle and coolly ethereal which makes light and warmth all the more luminescent when it does appear. Garment 1 (Mixed media) is a particularly beautiful example, the arms of the empty shirt outstretched like a prophet, tonally lit from within. The visual draw of this composition is to the centre of the image where the human heart should be, a space glowing like embers, the whole form suspended on a ground of the deepest ultramarine. The two dimensional painted surface itself is also illuminated at the edges, the panel rendered as symbolic as the treatment of the subject.

Absence of physical human form also creates a powerful presence in Hat 4, the skull cap hovering delicately, defining the space where a human head should be. The intimate, childlike scale of this work is poignant for it suggests mindfulness rooted in age rather than infancy, an object evocative of time and therefore of mortality in relation to the human condition.

White’s treatment of the human head throughout the exhibition is cerebral rather than personal; on an intimate or monumental scale the artist’s heads feel less like portraiture and more like Everyman. Heads 1-9 in graphite all look directly at the viewer as if through a veil of chiaroscuro, framed in isolation on dark grounds. Although they display individuality in variations of features, they feel very much like a chorus proclaiming the artist’s vision. These heads, like the objects depicted throughout the exhibition, are removed from their earthly context and hover like visions out of darkness or dreams.

Peter White's Garment Triptych

There is something inherently spiritual, yet completely non-denominational, about White’s imagery. In Garment Triptych (Mixed media 250cm x 130cm) his use of three panels and the empty garment, arms outstretched, immediately suggests the crucifixion, albeit with an absence of flesh and blood. A series of strips of cloth, each arranged emblematically on a variety of dark grounds feel as if they are details plucked from the art of medieval Germany or Flanders, with their religious motto or heraldry removed, blank, fluttering and suspended, each contained within their own dark space. The build up of the painted surface in mixed media feels like the accumulation of ages, particularly in the tar like background of Strip 10, the white illumination of an inanimate object recalling portraiture and figurative work of the Northern Renaissance.

Peter White's Bowl 2

There is a sense in which all of White’s objects become humanised, presented on panels in isolation and held aloft for contemplation; layers of wax and pigment are painstakingly crafted, contours of form and surface patina almost sculptural in their rendering. Garment 2 feels as though it is a panel wrought in bronze, steeped in aqua, blues, greens and russet, a diffuse palette, evocative of the effect of weather and the elements on metal, yet visually suspended as if seen underwater. The surface of the painting is alive with texture, and this attention to detail, the crafting of the image, is what makes White’s work so distinct.

Peter White’s latest solo show displays with insistence the artist’s unique vision but there is also variety in terms of subject matter and scale, creating a fluid dialogue between figurative, still life and landscape genres. White’s enigmatic work is beautifully crafted throughout, a perfect synthesis of technique and ideas.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

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• Kilmorack Gallery

Artist Allan MacDonald in his studio

GEORGINA COBURN: Your solo exhibition Until The Day Break at Kilmorack Gallery in the summer of 2010 was a landmark show for you both personally and professionally, can you comment on the evolution of that particular body of work?

ALLAN MACDONALD:  The work for Until The Day Break was built up over two years. When I know I’m having a solo show I keep painting as always, putting work aside, but all the time I’m waiting for a dominant theme or focus that holds it all together.

This last show the most significant event that happened was my Father passing away. The morning before he died I walked out of Raigmore and I saw a crescent moon, it was a beautiful image – very pale, just a little crescent of light in shadow. I thought about that and realised that shadow comes into a lot of my work.

I have always loved shadows. Ordinarily what’s in shadow is obscure, there’s no clarity – then you come into the light and brightness where things are defined. I flipped that on its head using the C S Lewis idea of the Shadowlands, we’re living in the Shadowlands; distinct, defined, familiar and what’s to come, the brightness, is less well defined. I had this at the back of my mind and kept painting.

I used a lot of blistering light, even in the portraits, which maybe gave the work a slightly transcendent feel, if that’s not too grand. The idea of permanence and flux also surfaced in the last show, I like painting things that have been and will be around a long time, which are also in a constant cycle of motion; the moon, the sea, the seasons.

Perhaps that’s one reason my landscapes are devoid of pylons, fences, houses, signposts and roads, all the things that form the fixed, frail finite web we weave. I’m more attracted to constant change. The genius of the creative world as I see it is that things are in a constant state of change but always the same.

The Coming of Winter

GEORGINA COBURN: Direct engagement with the landscape is central to your creative process. What draws you to a particular site in terms of working outdoors? How do you begin to capture an essence of place or are there larger forces of nature shaping the work?

ALLAN MACDONALD: It’s both place and larger forces. In terms of location I like remoteness, the more remote the better, that’s what I look for. You capture the essence of a place by knowing it – its colours, seasons, echoes and memories. I have never understood artists who go to Morocco or somewhere for two weeks then come back and have a one man show, assuming to know something of a place that they have barely breathed in. I do paint a lot from memory as well as going out on location.

First Snows, Oldshoremore

GEORGINA COBURN: Do you do a lot of oil sketches while out in the field?

ALLAN MACDONALD: No, I’m not a sketcher. I like full on painting. If it’s freezing cold I’ll go out and batter out something in an hour. Because it’s done quickly it has a lot of energy. I may work on it again when I get back. Some things come off the brush in one go, others take a lot of labour but I don’t really do sketches – the idea of going from a small sketch to a larger painting, from less information to more information, doesn’t appeal to me. I will sometimes work from a larger picture to a smaller one but on the whole I paint on the spot.

Cold, from out of the North, Cluanie

GEORGINA COBURN: There is a transcendent quality of light in your work; not just physically in the ever changing nature of the landscape you’ve chosen to work in, but symbolically and spiritually. How important is faith for you personally in the making of art and how do you see your role or responsibility as an artist?

ALLAN MACDONALD: My faith is behind everything, not at the forefront, generating energy quietly behind everything I do. I wonder what I would do as an artist if I didn’t believe that the world was intentionally beautiful or wilfully sublime. I don’t see the world as a hostile, detached place.

Pale Moon of the Seasons

GEORGINA COBURN: I think even in the darkest and most turbulent of your paintings there is always a signature flash of blue and the presence of light. There is always optimism, even if there is a sense of struggle – this was certainly true in the last show, that sense of energy, life and light was all-pervasive.

ALLAN MACDONALD: I glad you mention optimism – my friends think I’m a hopeless pessimist, but I feel differently. Michel Faber said when reviewing an earlier show of mine that “…his bleak Northern scenery might be expected to add up to a gloomy effect… yet somehow the opposite happens”.

Some art can, like prayer, be introspective, private, even secretive. Or it can be like praise – outward, exuberant and inclusive. I hope mine has elements of both, but probably veering to the latter. My faith also helps me keep perspective on art. It is not an end in itself. It is not the Holy Grail. Sometimes in our Western society, it appears as though the arts (film, TV, visual arts, literature, music) are themselves worthy of worship. Actors and musicians are almost deified.

Cul Beag, quiet time

GEORGINA COBURN: Is the act of painting redemptive?

ALLAN MACDONALD: It may be. It is a release. I am drawn out of myself by what is around me – the sky with its sense of infinity and the land with its tangible familiarity. When I see a red moon come up over Suilven in the winter time it isn’t enough for me to look at it, to enjoy it, I want to do more. I need to get the paints out, if I wasn’t doing that it would be very frustrating, so in that sense perhaps it is redemptive.

Sundown, sea and the coming winter

GEORGINA COBURN: For many people Highland landscape painting is entirely about a scenic view, we are still bound and tethered to the Victorian aesthetic of the Highlands as a vast wilderness or leisure park as depicted by Horatio McCulloch, Landseer and others. How do you view these kinds of representations of the landscape you live and work in and how do you feel this inheritance affects perception of contemporary work both within and outside the Highlands?

ALLAN MACDONALD: I think at the heart of my art form is authenticity. Were MacCulloch and Landseer, and Walter Scott for that matter, authentic? To be genuine you have to know, to know you normally have to experience. I’m not sure there is much difference to Landseer’s view of the Highlands than from some present day artist going abroad on a two week painting trip. I try and understand my small corner of the world, aware that the earth is full of many small corners. You try and know and expand in reference to a wider humanity.

The international symbols that identify Scotland (kilts, bagpipes, whisky) are all Highland in origin. I wonder if that still affects perceptions of everything else that’s done here. I know there has been the odd artist (like Will MacLean) from the Highlands that has become established, but it’s pretty rare. That may be partly our own fault, but I think most good artists in the Highlands (and there are a few) have little interest shown in their work in Glasgow or Edinburgh. People seem to think its just boring old landscape.

Black Cuillins and Marsco

GEORGINA COBURN: I think it is about getting beyond the scenic view of the Highlands. For me your most recent work transcended the genre of Highland landscape painting, there was an emotional and psychological dimension to the work that made me conscious not just of the landscape itself but a human mind perceiving it. In a previous solo show, Signs of Life (Browns Gallery 2007), there were glimmers of a more expressionistic sensibility starting to emerge – were you conscious of this ongoing development in terms of paint handling and choice of palette? How do you feel these elements enable greater depth of exploration in relation to subject matter?

ALLAN MACDONALD: My work has changed, and like all best changes it happened without trying. Quite a simple thing happened. I used to use thick layers of paint, it could be heavy but dead. I began to look at the roof of my studio, everybody who comes into the studio loves the roof – I love it. It’s all my random paint marks.

A Cloud that Passes, Beauly Firth

GEORGINA COBURN: (Looking up) Yes, there’s a lot of energy up there!

ALLAN MACDONALD: It is a great surface to work on. So I transposed the chance colours and marks on to blank boards and canvases instead of the roof. Over this ground I apply layers of thick paint, but also washes, still allowing what’s beneath to come through. I think this gives some energy to the paintings, a bit like how a boat lying in the sand becomes buoyant when the tide comes in – this heavy thing suddenly becomes lifted.

The best paintings are the ones that are least contrived, where the artist’s hand is largely unnoticed. It’s a fine line between the intentional and the unintentional, and I think I’m learning to juggle these elements. The constant battle you have as an artist is to transform inert pigment into light – your biggest friend is also your biggest enemy – white paint.

Introducing random colours and marks that come through as part of the ground, and learning how to balance warm and cold with colour, especially in the larger pieces, has changed the work. It’s also a way of looking – being aware of the landscape rather than staring at it, and new techniques have helped this way of seeing.

Damascun light, Skye

GEORGINA COBURN: Your work can be seen in the context of a Northern European Romantic tradition and as part of a national lineage of Scottish Art through the work of the early modernist William McTaggart and others. Can you comment on some of your formative influences and those within the current body of work?

ALLAN MACDONALD: I read a book by Robert Rosenblum on the Northern Romantic spirit and it at last put my work in context.

Self Portrait, winter sun

GEORGINA COBURN: I’m thinking of the front cover, which has Friedrich’s Monk By The Sea on it (Modern Painting and The Northern Romantic Tradition. Friedrich to Rothko by Robert Rosenblaum).

ALLAN MACDONALD: Exactly. Broadly he describes Southern Mediterranean art as more decorative in approach and Northern Art as more inwardly spiritual; artists such as Caspar Friedrich, Munch and Nolde, I have always loved this work. Climate plays a large part in the North European psyche, as it does with our music. Nobody in the South of France was ever going to write a pibroch. My formative influences were Caspar Friedrich, Turner, Nolde, Kokoshka, Munch, Georges Roualt also. But all this came after the Canadian artist Tom Thompson.

GEORGINA COBURN: What are the qualities you admire most about Thomson?

ALLAN MACDONALD: When I saw his paintings it was love at first sight, and it’s never dimmed. I haven’t tried to analyse this, it’s not healthy to analyse love. I’m not so keen on others in the Group of Seven, I thought he was well ahead of the rest. To me his are outstanding paintings; immediate, physical, joyful, perceptive. I know when I look at them that what propelled him in his kayak around the Canadian wilderness is the same stuff that takes me to the remote corners of the Highlands.

More recently, Auerbach, Eardley and Barbara Rae are painters I’ve enjoyed. But I’m not a great art watcher, I tend to paint in a bubble slightly. I know this can be unhealthy, but it’s a big beautiful bubble.

GEORGINA COBURN: How does work in other genres such as figurative, portraiture and still life inform your approach to landscape and composition?

ALLAN MACDONALD:  I’m more daunted when it comes to portraits and still life. I’m trying to introduce the positive qualities, the freedom and confidence of my landscape painting to the rest of my work. I started doing really big heads to try and get that freedom.

At the Going Down of the Sun

GEORGINA COBURN: Like dealing with a landmass.

ALLAN MACDONALD: Yes. I feel I’m bringing the landscape work and the figurative work closer together.

GEORGINA COBURN: While there is consistent emphasis in the contemporary art world on conceptual art and that which engages with the latest technological upgrade, one could argue that the art of painting remains embedded. Artists have continued to devote themselves to the medium and there is something timeless, immediate and physically tangible about human engagement with drawn marks, brushstrokes and pigment. What fundamental need does painting satisfy for you and where do you feel the art of painting sits in relation to contemporary art practice?

Still Growing (oil)

ALLAN MACDONALD: I don’t think painting will ever die. There will always be an audience for one man/woman, a guitar and a good song. So also with oil painting. On a very basic level people have walls and you can’t hang installations on walls! You mention mark making and it’s a good point. Use and mastery of a medium is a process largely neglected in much of what passes for modern art practice. If I play the violin and I want to express myself, I must have some mastery of my instrument. Otherwise my great ideas will lie dormant, or be poorly conveyed.

Conceptual art appears low on visuals, high on concept. Other newer art forms, maybe like street art or low brow, seem high on visuals, low on concept. Sweeping generalisation that, I’m sure. I’m not a big fan of work that needs adjacent essays to explain itself – more often than not, actually adding layers of inexplicableness.

Painting will survive because we’ve been there before – remember the glass of water on a shelf entitled ‘This is a tree’? I think a far greater danger to painting than conceptual art is TV and cinema, with its bombardment of changing images, endless choice and high octane interpretation of the world around us. And a flat screen TV fits perfectly on the wall where a painting should be!

For me painting is an outlet. A gold moon jumps out round the corner of Suilven, early evening. Winter … how on earth can I respond to this? Mountainous seas, grey herds as Neil Gunn called them, unleash themselves on an old headland, this is something to be shared, but how?

I’ll get my paints out.

© Georgina Coburn, 2011

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• Kilmorack Gallery

THIS LATEST mixed exhibition at Kilmorack Gallery brings much needed colour and vibrancy to the depths of winter with works by artists such as Henry Fraser, James Adams, Jim Bond, Marj Bond, Eugenia Vronskaya, Kirstie Cohen, Helen Denerley, Clare Harkess, Allan MacDonald, Ingebjorg Smith, Lotte Glob, James Hawkins, Jane MacNeill, Illona Morrice, Peter White, Robert McAulay and Allison Weightman. There are some beautiful and wonderfully engaging works on display, making venturing out into the artic chill well worth the journey.

Kirstie Cohen's Horse & Rider

Kirstie Cohen’s suite of four paintings featuring human and equine figures in a luminous palette of vivid orange, blue and purple are compositions of balance, beauty and resonance. Horse & Rider (i) (Oil on Board) is an excellent example, with the central figure in alizarin crimson flanked by two horses, the light fluid brushwork and incandescent colour almost otherworldly in their intensity. The arrangement of flattened blocks of abstract colour in the background provide harmonious structure, leading the eye into the image and intensifying experience of the figurative elements of each painting. Drawing in the viewer with pure colour and form these are works which invite closer inspection.

The geometry of these colourfields of background contrasts beautifully with the curves of horse and rider, exemplified in Figure With Horses in aqua, purple and burnished orange; the monumentality of the horse defined with delicacy in scratched and drawn marks on the head and chest; a powerful and dominant form in relation to the human figure. In Horses and Rider the depiction of a female figure on horseback represents a powerful equality of form. Colour and gesture in this work are finely wrought, the heads of the horses and background streaked with sublime aqua in a painting where every colour and mark sound a clear note, contributing to the harmonious and dynamic nature of the image as a whole.

This is a suite of four paintings brimming with life and the promise of great things to come. There is an engagement with paint handling and subject matter in the Horse and Rider and in the artist’s Icarus series, a grappling with the crafting of the image, which leaves the artist’s misty landscapes in the shade; the embodiment of a new sense of energy and clarity in Cohen’s work.

Allan MacDonald's Black Cuillins, Red Cuillins, Autumn

Following on from his outstanding solo show Until The Day Break earlier this year another of Kilmorack’s regularly exhibiting artists, Allan MacDonald, has some fine work on display. Black Cuillins, Red Cuillins, Autumn (Oil On Canvas) is a magnificent example, with incredible variations of colour within the brooding turbulence of the image. MacDonald’s vigorous handling of land and sky, the immediacy of his brushwork in direct response to the landscape, communicates the raw energy and power of nature seen through human eyes. Flashes of Naples yellow and a signature patch of optimistic blue in the high left hand corner of the painting temper the image into one of transcendence. MacDonald surpasses expectations of the genre entirely in his current body of work, an achievement which demands national acknowledgement and recognition.

Claire Harkess has contributed a wonderful series of mixed media works on paper distinctive for their economy of mark and breadth of expression. Like sculptor Helen Denerley, also featured in the exhibition, Harkess captures the essence of her subject in her depiction of wildlife. The artist’s rendering of two Black Backed Jackels, hinges on abstract marks registered by the eye – a square flash of white deliberating movement beneath black inked spine and sepia limb. The obtuse and angular arrangement of the two animals within the dynamic composition yields an energy and sense of movement that is palpable. In contrast Harkess’s Lion in black watercolour conveys a definitive and stately gait, the dry brushed tail held poised in delicate counterfoil to the weight and commanding posture of the head.

The unexpected beauty of Henry Fraser’s naïve figurative works is always a delight and the paintings featured in this latest show are no exception. Fraser’s abstracted portraits reveal amazing depth in terms of emotional recognition, tempered with the knowing inclusion of fragments of text and mark that create the possibility of multiple readings of dominant human element in his work. As agent of pure expressionism he elicits an immediately visceral as well as a cerebral response.
In The Executioner (Acrylic on Canvas) the grey mask and the suggestion of a human face in pencil mark and in the bare canvas of the ground forming the mouth, eyes and nose are set against a background of hot cadmium red. Beside the mouth found text “pass away” is collaged like a memento mori while the mask and temperature of the background challenges the supremacy of death with sex.

There is nothing naïve or simple about Fraser’s edgy and ambiguous figurative abstractions which often convey great vulnerability; an empathic understanding of the human condition conveyed with delicacy and pathos. Teaching Alice To Say Her Name is a great example of Fraser’s handling of materials – the resistance of acrylic on board echoing the open mouth in the child’s attempt to form words. Standing in front of this small work the sound is immediately audible. The treatment of the figure; dry brushwork of hair swept across the white forehead and open face, the fragile spatter of paint over bold simplified form and tiny eyes whose darkness penetrates the viewer’s own gaze make the image of the child and her attempt at expression universally human and poignant.

In Stanley’s Song, a larger scale portrait dominated by the seemingly oversized whitewashed head emerging out of burnt umber brush marks, Fraser creates recognition in a mutual gaze between artist, painted subject and viewer. The small concentrated eyes and flashes of orange under-painting subtly bring the abstracted human head to life in terms of character and consciousness. In the background wash of umber the words “tattie scones” are repeated like a mantra in lead pencil, a single thought in Stanley’s mind as he stares searchingly out of the painting and into the face of the viewer.

This is an invigorating show to end Kilmorack’s 2010 exhibition programme with developments in the work of several of gallery’s regularly exhibiting artists creating a sense of excitement and anticipation in 2011.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010

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• Kilmorack Gallery

Fall From Grace by Kirstie Cohen

KILMORACK Gallery’s latest show reveals exciting developments in the work of two of its regular exhibiting artists, Kirstie Cohen and Henry Fraser. It is an exhibition of stylistic contrast united in the quality of paint handling and adept crafting of composition.

Cohen’s signature atmospheric interpretation of Highland landscape is successfully taken a step further into new territory. Her engagement with oils and the art of painting have expanded the boundaries of her own technique, revealing another dimension beyond the depiction of misty mountains.

The introduction of a strong series of abstract figurative works which actively investigate the dynamics of composition are an important element in this latest showing of the artist’s work. The relationship between these and the landscape works is compelling, demonstrating the artist’s willingness to grapple with visual language, less reliant on her established grammar.

In these new works light is revealed not just as an observed optical effect but the stuff of illumination. This is illustrated beautifully by Winter I and II, where the directionality of the brushwork together with areas of high tonality creates a contest of natural elements binding the image convincingly together. There is a terrific sense of movement and cascading light in both works that is deeply affecting.

Cohen’s suite of Four Figures in a bright palette of vibrant orange, lilac and alizarin crimson suspends each figure within well balanced abstract fields of colour. The vibration of these hues together with loose and energetic brushwork defines human form within the composition.

Her diptych Fall From Grace (From the Icarus Series), composed with the same dynamic in a more subtle palette akin to her landscape works, distills these qualities further. The feminine and masculine figure in Fall From Grace assume a monumental presence and manipulation of abstract elements, fields of hue and tone are central to how we read them. A continuation of Cohen’s mythic Icarus series, human flesh and the physicality of paint meet the element of air, heralding a new equality of technique and ideas in the artist’s work.

This quality is also present in the magnificent larger scale diptych Sea Change (Oil on canvas), depicting an oceanic expanse in the Romantic tradition of Turner. The variation of mark and liquefied fluidity of fine brushwork lead the viewer’s imagination into the central storm of light at the centre of the composition. It is the human mind interacting with the landscape that is depicted, rather than descriptive trappings of vaporous mist.

It is equally gratifying to see the scale of ambition of Henry Fraser’s paintings expand in this exhibition. Fraser’s bold and deceptively naïve treatment of the human figure is pure expressionism, and larger scale works in this show such as The Visitors and Spirit Guide (Acrylic on Board) are exceptional examples of his work.

In The Visitors, the delicacy of Fraser’s paint handling and range of palette is all the more exquisite for not revealing itself immediately. The pale, opaque faces of the couple, warmed only by a feint spatter of vermillion and hint of yellow ochre, dominate the foreground, while the vertical bars or fence line behind them creates a confined psychological space.

The psychology of Fraser’s compositions and their emotional impact are pivotal in how we read the human element in his work. Although the figure is simplified, sometimes defined in the barest of brushstrokes, there is a feeling of emergence from a deeper ground of understanding, both in terms of the art of painting and on a spiritual level.

The characteristically small eyes in Fraser’s figures give us a glimmer of what lies behind; his art encourages the viewer to look closely and become truly absorbed in the space that the figure occupies.

The emotional range of Fraser’s work is expansive; from the pensive luminosity and stillness of Sister, the shining innocence and whimsy of Leo, or the menacing fear of Incantation, the bare soul of humanity is revealed in the crafting of the image.

Spirit Guide (Acrylic on board), a brilliantly balanced composition in striking umber and white, is tempered by more delicate layers of gold under-painting and bluish tinges of subtlety. The mask-like faces of human and cat, together with the striped horizontal bars of clothing, dominate the composition, compressing the subject in an intensely focused way.

The eyes seemingly reduced to dark pupils only heighten this sense of inner dwelling. The way the shadow on the face is handled in fine drip and spatter operates in beautiful counterpoint to the overall strength and simplicity of the image. There is always human vulnerability present in Fraser’s work in the merest line or shadow which is part of his appeal.

It is always a pleasure for established artists to surpass stylistic expectation, and Turn of the Tide and Congregation achieve this admirably. The integrity of paint as a medium of human expression and the visual literacy of both artists is richly in evidence throughout the exhibition, providing stimulating points of connection with the viewer.

© Georgina Coburn, 2010

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• Kilmorack Gallery

WALKING into Kilmorack Gallery’s latest show is like receiving an early Christmas present. The exhibition features suites of 10″ X 12″ works punctuated by larger scale pieces and sculptural works, beautifully lit and presented.

Alan McGowan - Untitled Figure

Featured artists include Marj Bond, Sam Cartman, Kirstie Cohen, Brigid Collins, Ian Cook (RI RSW), Helen Denerley, Michael Forbes, Henry Fraser, Helen Glassford, Lotte Glob, Clare Harkness, Allan MacDonald, Alan McGowan, Sam MacDonald, Beth Robertson Fiddes, Ingeborg Smith, Hoch Aun Teh, Eugenia Vronskaya, Erland Tait, Peter White and Pamela Tait.

The show offers an alternative scale to that which we are used to seeing exhibited regularly in the space. The overall effect is like a bejewelled Aladdin’s cave, and spending time exploring it, particularly on a dismal winter day, is an absolute pleasure.

Highlights of the 10″ X 12″ works include Henry Fraser’s powerful and contemplative Adoration, Sam Cartman’s accomplished abstract Elgol Study, the dreamlike textural delicacy of Smoo by Beth Robertson Fiddes, Erland Tait’s surreal portrait Dagda, Eugenia Vronskaya’s richly evocative Harbour Istanbul and an intriguing series of composite cultural portraits by Michael Forbes.

'King of the Monster Robots' by Michael Forbes

In the provocative spirit of Pop Art and Surrealism, Forbes’s sharp graphic style presents an assemblage of imagery drawn from Western consumer culture. Famous faces and fictions we immediately recognise are thrown together in ways that are subversive, optimistic and playfully absurd: A Clockwork Orange forehead, the snout of a bulldog and the chin of Churchill in Oh Yeah, Uncle Sam, Barrack Obama and Abe Lincoln in The Face of America and R2D2, Frankenstein and King Kong in King of The Monster Robots.

Among the larger scale pieces, watercolours by Clare Harkness – distinctive for their command of an unforgiving medium and sensitive restraint – have universal appeal. Lilac Bills, Red Footed Boobies Galapagos contrasts keenly observed detail of the birds’ heads with a more abstract definition of the space they inhabit. Harkness impressively defines this with a just few bold brushstrokes of wet on wet.

Her smaller ink studies of puffins also exhibit a high degree of measured technique. She gives us all the visual information we need in a few strokes without ever over-cooking the image. Another large scale work, Black Headed Gull, successfully retains the expanse of white paper, evocative of the subject’s swift and liberating sense of flight. She positions the bird on a dynamic visual trajectory that allows the viewer’s imagination to take flight with it, a rare quality in the genre of wildlife painting.

Although known primarily for her wildlife sculptures constructed from scrap metal, a series of prints by Helen Denerley present another facet of her work. The boldness of lino cut technique in Wild Boar is well suited to spirit of its subject, while the collagraph Horse evokes a totemic presence like that of ancient low relief Pictish sculpture.

It is in her beautifully rendered etching and charcoal Corbus, however, that Denerley’s two-dimensional work really comes into its own. At her best, Denerley invests her sculptures with the essence of line, form and movement that convincingly bring her creatures to life, and she achieves the same result here in two dimensions.

The crow’s scruffy, scratch-marked feathers suggest its inner voice; the stern beak aptly contrasted with the delicacy of its feet and pecked definition of marks in the foreground. The sharp quality of the etching tool together with the delicacy of mark achievable with this technique is key to how we read the image. The artist’s choice of medium suggests vulnerability in the crow akin to all living things.

You could not come and yet you go, a work in mixed media by Brigid Collins, displays her characteristic distillation of poetry and image. The open book format, intimate scale and sensitive treatment of materials create a precious and multilayered surface. The beautifully balanced composition assembles fragments of found materials, rag and waxy papers, thread, silver leaf and flowers revealing the unique textural qualities of each. Shimmering metal and opalescent surfaces are collaged with organic material and embossed fragments of poetry creating a hymn of visual counterpoint and remembrance.

Alan McGowan’s Untitled Figure is superbly drafted and composed, a tactile study of human flesh and form in a subdued palette of finely tuned cool and warm hues. His Ophelia, a shimmering torso submerged in a thin veil of green and purple paint spatter, is a superlative study of life and death. Although the head lolled back is treated rather too heavily in comparison to the exquisitely rendered torso, there is a great deal of promise in this work which begs for further development and execution on a larger scale.

McGowan’s Faust works ably demonstrate his ability to grapple with the core of literary subject matter to the point where the human body, personal and collective, becomes the text. It is always exciting to see works by this artist exhibited in the North, and I hope it will not be too long before we see a substantial show of larger scale pieces in the gallery.

“Small but powerful” is an apt description for many works in this show. Kilmorack has long established a reputation for consistency, quality and excellence and this latest exhibition is no exception.

© Georgina Coburn, 2009

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• Kilmorack Gallery

Helen Glassford - Blackened Heather

KILMORACK’S latest exhibition offers a strong show of work from three strikingly different but equally engaging artists.

A graduate of Duncan Of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, Helen Glassford’s exploration of landscape is at its best and most potent when transcending the literal. Though works such as After The Burning and Rannoch Moor, November, are well painted atmospheric evocations of landscape, it is in works such as Blackened Heather and First Flurries (Both Oil on Board) that she really comes into her own.

Here subtle variations of the palette, understanding of form and composition and handling of paint are acutely balanced. She distills the experience of the physical landscape into tangible poetic abstraction, creating an image which allows us not just to see but to feel unique qualities of location. These are images for the eye and mind to wander into rather than the two dimensional presentation of a particular view.

In Blackened Heather the strong compositional formality of the ashen foreground is complimented by sweeping ethereal under-painting, orange emerging through soft sage green. The sensitivity of the artist’s palette is further extended in First Flurries, matched by variation of brush marks. The purple darkened sky offset by hues of green, blue and pink are richly animated by gestural marks, fine areas of decalcomania and sweepingly curved drawn lines. A smaller work, A Little Piece of Paradise, is aptly named, a vision of green and vivid turquoise with strong blocks of colour dominating the composition.

Jim Bond’s sculptural and collage works are characterised by their playful sharp wit and creative engineering. Of the collage works on paper Crush, Errors, Pause Longer and Withdrawn are the finest, utilising aged paper documents, fragments of text, image and correspondence beautifully in each finely wrought composition. Use of found elements and collage technique recall Dadaist and Pop Art sensibilities, a spirit of humour and unease which permeates a work such as Crush.

Here the juxtaposition of factual fragments with unintelligible script and illustration create a beautifully absurd series of references for the viewer. There are echoes of Eduardo Paolozzi in Bond’s collage and sculptural work, elements which become fused in two beautiful small scale bronzes, Small Bronze Head and Letter Head, the latter seemingly collaged from concrete metal letters. The bronze surface is delicately scored and beautifully textured in an ambiguous way, striations of underlying metal suggestive of teeth in a fusion of organic and man made forms.

Elegant scaffolds of human form and ideas in steel and copper, the life sized Binary Man and Illustrated Man expand the idea of three dimensional drawing, while Nothing Can Stop My Headlong Rush introduces the element of movement. The sprinting figure rendered in beautifully drawn lines of metal responds to touch, the balance on one foot precariously launching the figure into space in an image of human vulnerability and emotive action.

Bond’s wonderfully disturbing kinetic sculpture Blink interacts with the viewer, the realism of the human eye encased in a robotic outer shell of copper. The shutter-like action of the eye triggered by movement of the viewer on entering its field of reference is a point of contact and alienation, the wires and mechanism clearly visible.

The whole piece sets up an interesting dialogue of human and industrial elements. The sculpture is reactive in a way that is disconcerting, a human/machine hybrid that takes the eye and renders it soulless in its mechanism while at the same time being self reflexive. The core sculptural element of the eye is recognizable and on some level as a viewer/participant we immediately identify with it.

This curious mirroring is also at play in Myopic, where the extended lens echoes the human sculptural form behind. In a clever manipulation of scale the sculptural head encased in a varied patina of camouflage is brought sharply into focus. Even with the lens the human face is obscured, we are unable to see the distant object clearly even though we are up close. The human form and its relative scale make the act of viewing personal. The juxtaposition of the concrete and the imaginative in Bond’s art is an essential and satisfying part of its intrigue.

Inspired by his experiences in South America, Ian Cook (RI RSW) has contributed a darkly engaging series of paintings to the exhibition, populated by iconographic figures, objects and animals. The Sorceress is a potent example, a juxtaposition of magical elements drawn into the composition and emerging mysteriously out of a black and purple ground.

This ground also represents richly fertile subconscious territory, a visual assimilation of sign and symbol animated by the artist’s vibrant use of colour. A rainbow-like flash of colour and energy equals the powerful gesture of the sorceress’s outstretched hand illuminated beneath the dominant moon. Similarly a heightened sense of reality is created in Nocturne; the high illumination of mask-like human, bird and abstract forms is achieved not just by tonal contrast but with colour, a dark night of the soul brought vividly to life.

Equally powerful is Fisherman’s Tableaux (Watercolor and Gouache), presenting a strong totemic image in blue, black and red like an imprint on the mind. Among the most dynamic paintings in the exhibition are Cook’s large scale figurative works, Mother and Child, reminiscent of De Kooning, and Running Woman (Oil on Canvas).

The monumental almost sculptural treatment of the figure compressed into the rectangular picture plane intensifies the expressivity of the body. Running Woman is Picassoesque in its treatment of the female form; darkly outlined and strikingly angular accented with bold flattened areas of cadmium red, ultramarine and cerulean blue.

It is a pleasure to see the introduction of new work to Kilmorack in a format which allows appreciation of each individual body of work. The exhibition represents a strong and divergent trio of artists fully engaged with their chosen medium.

© Georgina Coburn, 2009

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• Kilmorack Gallery

Crocodile by Helen Denerley

HELEN DENERLEY’S latest solo show at Kilmorack Gallery captures a moment of beauty and horror where every fibre of a creature’s being has been honed for fight or flight. The “tension between predator and prey” in the animal kingdom is beautifully realised in a series of drawings and sculptures that reveal the artist’s powers of observation, fine draughtsmanship and ability to transform scrap metal into living breathing form.

The way the show has been displayed, with animals raised on scaffold, perched or suspended in the gallery and lit dramatically against the red walls, heightens our sense of the impending moment of action.

Denerley’s Crocodile is without doubt one of her finest works to date, a complex and intricate arrangement of agricultural chains forming the undulating rhythm of armored skin and animating the great serpentine sweep of its body. Life-size, the sculpture is a terrifying testimony to evolution, supremely geared to its purpose – a survivor of millions of years.

The artist is able to distill its essence into every last piece of recovered metal. Soldering around the mouth and teeth give the creature a feeling of age and endurance, while the greenish swamp-drenched stain of the underbelly gives the viewer a flash of colour like that seen from the corner of an eye.

The machine-like efficiency of the animal bears an interesting relationship to the human cast-off industrial parts that make up its body. From the rudder-like tail to the curve of its splayed toes, every detail is poised for movement, ready to launch itself across the gallery floor in a millisecond! The real beauty of this work is not its essential realism but the way in which Denerley masterfully transforms her materials and activates the imagination of the viewer.

A group of three Hunting Dogs in pack formation demonstrate the artist’s understanding of canine anatomy and body language, with every muscle and sinew articulated in metal; heads down, eyes fixed on their target, ready to run. The way that we read this fragment of narrative is with the excitement and anticipation of the natural drama to follow.

Denerley’s drawings and sculpture of her own dog, Molly, give wonderful insight into the artist’s creative process. Molly in Basket (Charcoal on Paper) and Molly Sleeping ii (Ink on Paper) are superbly observed, drafted and understood. Without this essence of line the sculptures would not be realised.

Denerley uses line within three dimensional forms to great effect in her two Thompson’s Gazelle, allowing us to see through the form of the body to follow the elegant lines of the face and neck. Exploration of positive and negative space together with the play of line and shadow in the focus-lit exhibition space create another level of articulation in the work.

Less convincing are Denerley’s feline studies and sculptures, which seem heavy set in comparison. Whilst the metallic stare of her Amur Leopard is arresting, the form of its body is less finely articulated than the group of Hunting Dogs, her lurcher Molly or Sid the boxer dog. There is something unnaturally awkward about the Amur Leopard and Snow Leopard sculptures in comparison to the other works on display, a quality that seems at odds with the essence of the animal and the exceptional ability of the artist.

Contrast of materials is utilised beautifully in Golden Scaffinch in the molten gold of its back, delicate spiral screw legs and keys ingeniously forming the tail feathers. Together with Eagle, Sparrowhawk, Owl, Warbler and Wagtail sculptures, the exhibition is an ornithologists dream.

A series of Bull monoprints in the vestry, notably Bull ix, gave the impression of a rubbed surface, like that of a cave painting, and interestingly explore the symbolic line of the animal’s body. This print in particular reminded me of ancient painting and sculpture, combining observation with ritual. These pieces have an interesting resonance and it would be fascinating to see Denerley explore this further in future two or three dimensional work.

Fight or Flight is a show with wide appeal to an audience of all ages, and anyone with an interest in art or nature will find much to enjoy in this exhibition. Helen Denerley’s skill and insight as an artist are undeniable and it would be wonderful to see her work on permanent public display in the North.

© Georgina Coburn, 2009

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery

Hatchet Fish by Sam MacDonald

KILMORACK’S latest mixed show is the perfect exhibition to visit on a cold December day, offering an excellent selection of new work to enjoy and contemplate. The show includes works by Paul Bloomer, Jim Bond, Kirstie Cohen, Angus Clyne, Helen Denerley, James Hawkins, Allan MacDonald, Robert McAulay, James McCallum, Ingeborg Smith, Illona Morrice, Blair Thompson, Sam MacDonald, Frank To, Eugenia Vronskaya, Jym Brammah, Henry Fraser and Peter White.

Among the highlights are strong showings of works by Paul Bloomer, Sam MacDonald and Allan MacDonald together with Frank To’s figurative work Moira, Blair Thompson’s beautifully rendered and energetic ink drawings Appearing and Tullochgrue and Ingebjorg Smith’s lyrical mixed media work Raindrop Wheatear.

Paintings by Shetland based artist Paul Bloomer display his characteristic command of composition. The large scale Gannets at Noss (Oil on Canvas) is a superb example. The artist’s considerable experience in printmaking – particularly large scale woodcuts – has contributed much to the strong design and composition of his paintings. Work in black and white using woodcut technique is decisive, in terms of the strength of each mark and the balance of the composition.

This is clearly evident in the formal elements of this work locked in a spiral of pure energy. The placement of the seabirds in a brilliant interplay of positive and negative space, subtle variation of tone and the spiralling brushwork of the background lead the eye into the work from a high aerial perspective. A large beak protruding into the left hand corner of the composition heightens the sense of depth in the work looking down to the cliffs, caves and ocean beneath.

A vibrant palette of turquoise and ultramarine is accented by the black wing tips and white body patterns of the Gannets in their descent. Softer treatment of the stylised cliffs touched by warm ochre reminded me very much of the work of Canadian Group of Seven artist Lawren Harris, especially in relation to its formal design and inherent spiritual qualities.

Bloomer’s current work celebrates the beauty and energy of the natural world. Migrants balances colour and form on branches teeming with life. His abstract mixed media landscapes, woodcuts, and large scale figurative and narrative works are equally dynamic and accomplished. Having exhibited widely elsewhere, this artist is long overdue a major solo show in the Highlands.

Alan MacDonald has contributed some particularly fine works to the exhibition, including Old Headland (Oil on board), a beautiful seascape where the solidity of warm brown rock is pitted against the icy green turbulence of the raging sea. There is tremendous movement in this work demonstrating a mature understanding of oils and a strong personal connection with the natural environment.

MacDonald’s work out of doors contributes much to the energy of his work and his ability to capture the ever changing elements of the Highland landscape. The rhythmic brushwork and softer palette of High Place Suliven is beautifully handled. This is a serene and aspirational image where the central landform becomes a natural and spiritual focus in the work.

The smaller work Mountain Shadow (Oil on board) is an absolute gem. Here MacDonald grasps the light reflected in the sky and water in thick impasto with a dominant palette of red, purple, lemon yellow and white. This is a more abstract work and wonderfully expressive, a tendency which emerged in MacDonald’s last solo show and that I hope we shall see develop further in future, lead directly by the artist’s handling of paint.

Sam MacDonald’s wildlife sculpture is magnificently crafted. Sensitivity to materials is part of the delicacy and detail characteristic of his work. Half Mile Down (Bronze, pewter, gold leaf and copper) utilises layers of metal and patination to take the viewer into mysterious depths. The partial spiral of the background in low relief and the positioning of the fish suggest a depth of ground in the mind’s eye. The lustre of the metal together with the interplay of gold, silver and bronze colouration capture the natural beauty, the shimmer of scales and fluidity of light within a watery medium.

Hatchet Fish (Pewter, Gold Leaf and copper) reveals MacDonald’s ability to work with great subtlety in metal with variations in colour tinged with blue, copper and silver. In Mayfly and Brownie (Copper and brass) etched markings further refine the metallic surface, with the finely rendered mayfly balanced on the surface of the water and the brown trout accented with bluish green and red. As this suite of works clearly demonstrates, craftsmanship is a hallmark of MacDonald’s practice and I would love to see more work by this artist on a larger scale.

Kilmorack Gallery has consistently delivered a programme of exceptional quality throughout its history. In 2008 the Art and the Word exhibition was one of the area’s cultural highlights and it was particularly gratifying to see a more creative approach to curating in a commercial gallery space.

Great programming in any art form isn’t about delivering what we expect – it is about surpassing those expectations and raising the bar. This is of particular importance in terms of the profile and public expectation about Visual Art in our area and in this respect it is the private rather than the public sector who are leading the way.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

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Alan McGowan's Hexenspiegel (Witches Mirror)

THIS EXHIBITION explores the relationship between image and text in a way that transcends literal illustration. Featuring work by Marj Bond, Kirstie Cohen, Brigid Collins, Helen Denerley, Michael Forbes, Henry Fraser, Lotte Glob, Kate Leiper, Gerald Laing, Jane MacNeill, Allan Macdonald, Alan McGowan, Ian Scott, Ingeborg Smith and Frank To, there are many works in this exhibition to be savoured.

The way that visual artists have responded to a wide range of texts including Milton’s Paradise Lost, Goethe’s Faust, Psalm 8, Robert Louis Stevenson and lyrics from a Japanese heavy metal band are deeply fascinating. The best works in the show grapple with the poetics of visual language and are as inspiring as their original source material.

A series of images inspired by Goethe’s Faust by Edinburgh based artist Alan McGowan are truly remarkable. McGowan’s handling of materials (compressed charcoal, turpentine, acrylic, wax and oil), fine draughtsmanship and innate understanding of chiaroscuro create a breathtaking vision. He has captured the enduring soul of the play and its central character in the most extraordinary way.

What he manages to achieve in these works engages with the subject on multiple levels. This is not just about accomplished technique, but an understanding of the light and dark of the human soul and the conflict of drawing.

‘Hexenspiegel (Witches Mirror)’ (150cm x150cm) is a magnificent example, a dark triptych-like composition that owes much in spirit to the work of Francis Bacon. On one level it is a superb life study, the face and identity hidden beneath the dark shadow of an umbrella. High tonal contrast illuminates the body, drawing our eye to the centre of the drawing, the framing of glass adding another layer of psychology to the shifting light and shadow of the image.

Even in its darkest recesses to the left and right of the figure this work is alive, animated by a head crying in anguish beneath the shimmering torso. Like the best of Bacon’s works, the image is a manifestation of beauty and disturbance. The mirror as an instrument of distortion and truth is explored beautifully by the hand of the artist but also in the act of seeing by the viewer.

The way we are led into the work is masterful and compelling, wrestling with the same elements of creation and destruction that define the battle for Faust’s mortal soul. This human and artistic conflict is the raw energy of darkness and light in McGowan’s work, which for all its power never loses sight of human vulnerability.

The discipline of life drawing is richly evident in his work. No other study teaches the kind of sensitivity of mark that is essential in depiction of the human form, regardless of whether this is used in the service of abstraction or of realism in an artist’s work. McGowan’s drawing moves beyond anatomy or illustration revealing the body itself as text.

The inner life of his figurative work is what makes it so extraordinary. ‘Nacht (Night)’ is a night of the soul, the reclining figure bearing the full weight and burden of knowledge signified by the globes above. In the study ‘Globe’, McGowan combines bold form and tone with the most delicate of marks, the image is both epic and intimate.

‘Gretchen Head’ extends this idea in figurative terms. The ghostly emergence of the head out of shadow recalls the work of Glasgow artist Ken Currie and implies human frailty and mortality. The human presence in McGowan’s work also invokes the psychological intensity characteristic of Rembrandt’s portraits. The vitality of these drawings, together with their undeniable technical skill are every bit as “unmissably powerful” as the press release claims.

Regular visitors to Kilmorack familiar with the landscape works of Kirstie Cohen will see another dimension to her work in this exhibition. Her ‘Icarus’ series is an exciting indicator of what this artist is capable of, liberated from the typecasting of misty Highland landscapes. Cohen’s accomplished technique in oils captures the shifting light, weather and atmosphere of the North, here her response to the ancient Greek myth fuses pure flesh with air.

The fallen figure is suggested in these abstracted and finely balanced compositions of light, colour and movement and their dynamism is an absolute pleasure to behold. These are some of the best works I’ve seen by Cohen because they reveal engagement with the elusive quality of paint itself, the mythical and creative conflict of aspiration with earthly gravity.

The “Icarus” series represents an absolute marriage of technique and ideas, revealing an aspect of the artist’s work previously unseen. For a commercial gallery to exhibit and encourage broad thematic interpretations rather than convenient signatures is a strength, and demonstrates a commitment to showing fresh and original work. New work by Brigid Collins and Henry Fraser further expand our parameters of expectation.

Collins’ use of mixed media is extremely effective combining a variety of techniques with found objects in her two dimensional works and three dimensional ‘Poem Houses’. ‘Seven Changes’, inspired by a Haiku by Bairyu, interprets the Japanese death poem in the enlarged form of a delicate flower. A single bloom dominates the composition, and this enlargement of form is contrasted with the handling of media as light a butterfly wings.

The way in which colours are subtly blended, ranging through aqua-green, blues and purples, the fine spatter at the centre of the flower and the bevelled edged fragility of paper add to the vulnerability of the image. It is a beautiful meditation with watermarks suggestive of tears or rain; the human condition mirrored in the transience of nature as the bloom begins to fade.

‘Down and Out in Paris and London’, inspired by Orwell, utilises collage and mixed media in a strong composition of caked materials; coffee stains, newspaper fragments and a cigarette butt on an aged edge of porcelain. It is an image lived in every sense, the bones of the fish upon the plate metaphorically picked clean.

Collins comment that “Poetry is a constant source of inspiration and the forms I create act as a place of safe keeping for words that resonate and stimulate my imagination” reveals an essential relationship with text and the value of cross-disciplinary practice. This precious quality is realised in her finely layered works. ‘Heart, Breath, Moon and You’, inspired by a poem by the artist, is a richly textured example, where the colour crimson and embossed fragmentary material are melded by the artist to create a sense of warmth, fusion and emotional gravity.

New work in the gallery by Henry Fraser reminded me a great deal of the 1940’s Australian artist Joy Hester. Fraser strips back the figure to bare lines in a deceptively naïve style. Like Hester, emotion is heightened by the starkness and childlike execution of the drawings. Fraser’s work is characterised by a raw expressionistic energy, pared down in works such as ‘Shout’ and ‘Utter’, where the lone figure’s evocation of text is a single human sound.

‘Anthem’, with its cadmium red sky bearing down on the suggested gathering below groups the human figure en masse, individual identity subsumed by the rallied response. ‘Night Prayer’ exhibits all the freshness of drawn marks, the simple lines of bed, striped pyjamas and rosary creating a devotional, ritualistic image.

The technique of acrylic on board adds to the edgy quality in his work. Working on board there is always resistance in the handling of paint. Fraser’s response to the stimulus of prayer, psalm or anthem in figurative terms is the “word made flesh”. His treatment of the figure is extremely interesting in psychological terms, and a fresh new voice joining the gallery’s regular exhibiting artists.

This is an inspiring show that one might not expect to see in a commercial gallery. It is always a pleasure to walk into such a space and be surprised. In an area devoid of public art spaces of quality, Kilmorack sets a high bar in terms of the vision of this exhibition. The quality of work on show is exceptional and the responses diverse, expanding the parameters of expectation about regular exhibiting artists and introducing new work. Allow yourself time to enjoy this show, a wonderful celebration of visual art as text in its own right.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

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THE ART of painting takes centre stage in Kilmorack’s latest showing of work by Eugenia Vronskaya and Nael Hanna. Anyone who appreciates the tactile quality of paint, excellent draughtsmanship or subtleties of colour will find much to enjoy in this exhibition. For me the most engaging work in any show is the result of a balance between technique and ideas, and in this respect Vronskaya’s contribution is the stronger of the two.

With the exception of his largest work in the exhibition; ‘Washed Creels, East Coast’ (Mixed media on canvas 244 x 122cm), Nael Hanna’s seascapes are strangely eclipsed by his still life works in this show. Many of the smaller landscape works fall back on familiar visual phrases; the point where two opposing forces of water meet in a white cascade of waves, the balance of land, sea and sky and a consistent palette.

Whilst stylistic hallmarks define an established artist, they can also appear formulaic. Hanna’s paint handling is undisputed; however there are times when the artist’s seascapes seem typecast. The power of nature is present in every scene and yet diminished through refined technique and repetition.

In contrast, ‘Washed Creels, East Coast’, with its eerily blue sky and immeasurable expanse of space, is brilliant and poetic. This is a piece that feels like a greater expansion of the artist’s technique and consequently the viewer’s perception expands with the work. There is a sense of struggle here, of physical engagement and build up of the painting’s surface which together with the delicacy of the creel traps in the dark foreground suggest human activity and scale. Overwhelmingly there is a feeling of elevation and peace in this work, of being drawn into the expanse of sea and sky that is spiritual in nature.

Hanna’s depiction of the Scottish coast echoes that of Joan Eardley. There is always a sense of a force greater than our own. Hanna’s compositions are an interesting dialogue between solidity of form and the ever changeable forces of wind and tide. A work like ‘Harmony of Land and Sea’ is a good example.

In ‘Rain On The Sea, Auchnithie’, use of mixed media creates variation in texture contributing to the spatial quality of the work. Fine details in the foreground are contrasted with fluid or cross hatched sweeps of impasto and accents of colour that bring the scene to life.

The still life ‘Warmth’ invests everyday objects with a striking immediacy of feeling. The emphasis on the emotive qualities of colour and brushwork make this an unexpected gem. Richly animated by vermillion, orange, cadmium and crimson emerging out of a rose tinted grey ground, the painting is infused with heartfelt energy.

A sense of humanity and real engagement with both subject and technique characterise this and ‘Still Life With Mandolin’. In this painting the treatment of the flowers is so fluid and robust that they have a presence all of their own in a subtle rainbow of colours, veiled in grey.

Eugenie Vronskaya’s latest body of work, ‘An Altar and Fruits and A Flame’, demonstrates her capacity to engage the viewer on many levels; formally, aesthetically, emotionally and psychologically. Her proficiency as a draughtswoman and skill at composition is astonishing. Illumination is at the heart of her work, investing everyday objects with a power and luminosity that never ceases to fascinate and challenge the viewer.

The fusion of beauty and unease in her work is one of its most potent qualities. ‘Still Life’, a human body bent over in a prayer position, is an excellent example, an arrangement of line and object that ironically suggests a life drawing.

The freshness and spontaneity of drawn marks are preserved in this painting, contrasting with the mask forming the head. Tilted uncomfortably, it is modelled with the precision of a Dutch master. This tension between live human body and dead object is palpable. Realism in this work is not literal, nor is it to be taken for granted. Techniques are seamlessly grafted to form the body in a dialogue of unease, a marriage between life and death that epitomises the human condition.

The play of light over the back contrasts with the composition of the body in a way that is supremely beautiful and equally disturbing. Amazingly the plausibility of the figure itself is completely maintained. Beneath the mask eyes stare out at the viewer in a gaze which is penetrating and quietly confrontational with the body pushed to the upper edge of the picture plane.

The way in which the figure evokes a psychological, emotive response is reminiscent of Kokoschka. The human stage is always present, even in a composition comprised purely of objects such as ‘Black Sheep’ or ‘Drunken Sailors’. Vronskaya turns our expectation of ‘Still Life’ completely on its head with characteristic humour, irony and skill.

‘Mid Winter’ (Oil on Board) captures perfectly the temperature of the season with a composition of empty jars. The simplicity and clarity of this work is like inhaling on the coldest of winter mornings. The crisp lines of the jars, play of light and subtlety of the artist’s palette transform the arrangement of objects into the suggestion of something far greater.

They evoke a state of mind and an attitude to the world, an act of distillation which is at the heart of all great painting. Vronskaya does not just make us look, she makes us see. The altar, threshold and everyday objects are subjects transformed by the manner of depiction and the artist’s intent. Light is not a physical presence in these works but part of their essential humanity in a perfect fusion of technique and ideas.

The formal qualities of Vronskaya’s compositions being consistently refined are richly in evidence here. ‘Dead End’, ‘Behaved Nuns’ and ‘White Wedding’ are good examples, pushing perspective and pyramid composition into emotive territory. Absolute understanding of these pictorial devices allows the artist to push them further and redefine our expectations of painting as an art form.

‘Prayer Position’, a larger scale oil on canvas, introduces stronger elements of colour in an intriguing merger of realism and abstraction. The tension between these two painterly techniques and the introduction of more dominant areas of colour are an interesting development in the artist’s work.

The abstract handling of the ground and overlap of different visual fields create a feeling of parallel realities. We are not looking at a literal pose but an attitude or state of being that has the power to transform. Like the altar works this painting is a platform for contemplation and transformation.

The acidic yellow and myriad of greys accented with crimson, umber and ochre create a feeling of struggle at the heart of this human still life. As with all of Vronskaya’s work colour is never used simply to attract the eye or in a decorative way, it is integral to the grand design, the integrity of the work and the composition as a whole.

This show is a great testimony to the art of painting and its resonance as a vital, expressive, challenging and relevant form of communication. Though many other art forms dominate the contemporary art world few actually demonstrate equality of technique and ideas that are in evidence here.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

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Reclining Figure by Alan McGowan

THE WORK of Edinburgh-based artist Alan McGowan makes a stunning debut in Kilmorack’s latest exhibition. Superb draughtsmanship, superior paint handling and a deep understanding of the inner workings of the human figure define this artist’s work. Although the McGowan’s knowledge of anatomy is obvious, working consistently with the same models has allowed him to go deeper to convey the essence of the subject.

Acute and penetrating, his work in oil paint, beeswax, sawdust and straw is immediately tactile with an exquisite range of mark, from soft tonal definition and finely drawn contours to the raw energy of drips, splatters and thick impasto. Powerful and delicately vulnerable in equal measure, McGowan’s vision exhibits the uncompromising edge of Francis Bacon in his ‘Sitting Figure’, the sensitivity of Degas in the soft rendering and intimate scale of his sublimely feminine ‘Untitled Figure’, and high contrast in his “Inverted” cruciform series, reminiscent of Goya or Rembrandt.

More robust, looser handling in some of the inverted figures also recall the earthy realism of Daumier. This is strongly conscious work, conscious of the tradition of figurative painting that has gone before and so able to definitively forge its own mark. In McGowan’s hands paint is not about surfaces but grappling with life. For the artist “Art is prefaced by hunger, it moves to meet a feeling inside.” McGowan succeeds in enabling the viewer to experience that same hunger.

His large scale ‘Untitled Figure’ (hung to the right of the vestry entrance) is a particularly fine example, the kneeling figure curved in on itself dominating the composition. The control and energy of this work is remarkable, the fluidity of the paintwork and the bulk of the main form beautifully balanced. Seen from a distance the earthiness of black, ochre, sienna and umber give way to the sublime definition of back, ribs and belly made visible through golden dappled light and finely drawn contours perfected by every brush stroke.

Straw, wax and impasto echo the origins of creation; human life created in clay and ending in dust. The whole figure is defined by an abstract shroud of black marks, occupying a timeless space with no physical setting and bound to our collective sense of mortality. This is an impressive and memorable body of work grounded in the discipline of life drawing, bold experimentation, accurate observation and pure expression.

Jane MacNeill’s ethereal treatment of the figure recalls the 19th century Pre-Raphaelite movement in subject matter and attitude. Nature as a source of the divine and archetypal associations through legend and mythology are a rich source of symbolism in her work. Figures are elongated, emerging out of a dominant blue ground linking the human figure to a world of “mystery, spirituality and twilight”.

Her selection of the Borders ‘Ballad of Tam Lin’ as the narrative subject matter of this latest body of work is an interesting one, where atypically the central protagonist and hero of the tale is a woman. Fluidity between worlds is expressed in the story of the knight Tam Lin whose soul is suspended in the realm of the fairies and in the magical way that figures emerge out of the shadow, not of darkness but of hue framed simply in gold.

The colours of these works are tonally quite close together giving a veiled effect which adds to the feeling of otherworldinless and expectation. The hanging of these paintings against the salmon high walls of the gallery accentuates this quality even further, picking up the palette of the series as if each figure was emerging magically out of devotional fabric of the architecture. The whole exhibition is beautifully lit and presented in a way that allows the viewer to really appreciate the unique qualities of each artist.

Capable of great sensitivity and power in his depiction of the Northern landscape, Allan MacDonald’s latest body of work is a strong showing of his signature style.

Infused with the pure energy of nature and its changing seasons, works like ‘Snow Cloud, Ben Alligin’ (Oil on board) presents a monumental vision of mountain and sky grounded in the artist’s direct engagement with the environment. The subject is defined not just in terms of its majesty, or a romanticised idea of Highland landscape, but a more visceral and immediate response communicated through emotive and dynamic paint handling. MacDonald’s solo show “Signs of Life” in 2007 displayed works with a more experimental approach and although this exciting new strand of his work is sadly absent here, his landscape works do not disappoint.

‘Frost Shadows, Cabrich’ with its creamy yellow and complimentary blue is a gentle and balanced work with cool colours giving way to warmth as the light begins to shift, the ground thawing before our eyes. The subtle qualities of light and colour heightened by the Northern winter are beautifully captured by a vibrant yet controlled palette. ‘Black Cuillins, Autumn’, with its vital reds and oranges, green and ochre depicts a land alive with colour and the sweeping expanse of the artist’s brushstrokes.

Similarly ‘Black Cuillins’ with a surge of pure white energy emerging out of the peaty black, high horizon with flashes of red and cerulean blue convey the life force of the landscape. Often in MacDonald’s work the smallest marks of strident colour are used to brilliant effect. Even in the stormiest sky there is always a ray of light or a defiant stroke of colour, investing the work with a spirit of hope in the face of change that like the sheer forces of nature threaten to overwhelm us. Though the human figure is never depicted in the landscape our scale is implicit in the artist’s treatment of the subject.

This is a fine exhibition by three accomplished painters, combining the high expectation of two of the gallery’s regular exhibitors, Allan MacDonald and Jane MacNeill, with the introduction of new energy in the figurative work of Alan McGowan.

© Georgina Coburn, 2008

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Jim Bond - Blown Away

THE INTRODUCTION of some exciting new work from Charles MacQueen, Blair Thompson, Jim Bond, Sian MacQueen and Anna Raven accompanies a selection of work from Kilmorack regulars Helen Denerley, Angus Clyne, Ingeborg Smith, Lotte Glob, Alan MacDonald, Kirstie Cohen, Peter White, Marj Bond, Lawrence Broderick, Nael Hanna and James Hawkins as part of this latest mixed show.

Jim Bond’s sculpture “Blown Away” in copper and steel is a beautifully constructed and lyrical piece on an intimate scale. The steel framework of the figure is skilfully modelled, caught in a moment where it begins to disintegrate in response to an unseen force. Copper plates that clad the figure like an exoskeleton are suspended as they fly away in a trail behind the male figure with his head bowed, bracing himself against a mighty wind. Wires attached to the figure move on approach, gently animating the work.

“Figure Head” (Copper & Steel) is another witty and well executed piece with the scale and form of a human skull. Numerals of varying sizes interlock to form the hollow head. The ingenuity of these pieces, their craftsmanship and humour are distinctive and engaging.

A series of works by Blair Thompson make a strong and lasting impression. “Intersection” (Oil on canvas) combines a still ground of deepening bluish grey over which a select palette of yellow to green and alizarin crimson to cadmium red define bold abstract forms. Black and textured impasto creates a unique signature upon the work. The style is dynamic and edgy, revealing a raw quality that for me recalls the work of the great Australian artist Albert Tucker.

Although forms suggest a built or post industrial environment they also have the presence of human figures. “Vestige” is another fine example in turquoise green, coral red and deep black. This could be read as the final stand of a decaying structure or a pair of sparring figures. There is economy here in expression which is immediate, bold and intensely refreshing.

Smaller works in the show including “Ishite-ji – Pagoda” and “Moving Through -Kikko Japan” with its blue, black and red stacked architecture suggest Eastern influence. But it is the attitude of the work, the paint handling and choice of palette that reveals a deeper level of this influence than literal subject matter. The dominant palette and the boldness of calligraphy convey an understanding of elements beyond a particular culture or scene.

In complete contrast Sian MacQueen’s work is quiet and introspective. Her acrylic on gesso technique creates fascinating rippling textures in a series of tranquil seascapes. “Sky Clears West of Jura” reveals its underpainted layers with a pastel-like softness. The surface of the work is like a skin with dancing contrasts of colour and texture in the foreground.

This technique is used to great affect in “Corryvrekin Squall” with its shaft of light breaking through dense low cloud and illuminating a concentrated section of dark ocean. The foreground treatment scratched away and distressed like a piece of driftwood is immediately tacticle, leading our eye from a distant scene into an experience which is tangible and meditative.

Two works by Charles MacQueen are for me the stars of this show. “Autumn Pond” combines unbridled energy and brilliant paint handling with perfect composition in a beautifully balanced and refined work. The bare scratched branches burning with intense red, vibrancy of the turquoise water and scoured textures of the background reveal themselves evocatively like layers of perception.

The smallest work of the series “Japanese Pond” is the strongest and most sublime, with the freshness and spontaneity of splattered and gouged paint, flattened perspective and rock solid composition. This is a supremely beautiful work that successfully combines pure expression with technique in equal measure, an enviable achievement for any artist.

Displayed in the vestibule are a wonderful collection of collographs by Anna Raven. “View of Loch Aline A/P” and “View of Loch Aline 4/25″ are the most captivating. This whole process of printmaking is fascinating, retaining the low relief quality and depth built up on the original plate. Here scored textures softly merging blue and black into sepia create a languid mood. Exploring the range of mark on the surface is as much a part of the creative process as the act of viewing the completed work.

There is much to be savoured in this latest mixed show. True to form Kilmorack continues to yield surprises, introducing new work to Highland audiences and maintaining superior standards of presentation. Work is allowed to breathe in this space and it is always a pleasure to view work in such an environment. It is no surprise that in the last decade the gallery has established an excellent reputation presenting a consistently high standard of work and this latest exhibition is no exception.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

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• Kilmorack Gallery
• Additional images from the Christmas Exhibition 2007

'Mountain Pass' by Kirstie Cohen (oil on board)

THIS CURRENT exhibition includes work by Kilmorack regulars Kirstie Cohen, Sarah Carrington, Nael Hanna, James Hawkins, Allan MacDonald, Robert McAulay, James McCallum, Ingebjorg Smith, Peter White, Eugenia Vronskaya and a selection of work from artists new to the gallery: Marj Bond, Hamish MacKie, Ian Scott and Hock-Aun Teh.

Over the last ten years Kilmorack Gallery has established a reputation for quality and this is easy to see in new work by regular exhibiting artists such as Eugenia Vronskaya and Peter White.

Vronskaya’s three works in this mixed show display her characteristic edginess, wit and superb paint handling, elevating the everyday genre of still life into something not only brilliantly observed but emotionally charged.

Never simply decorative but always challenging, the artist’s arrangement of objects makes us look again at what we take for granted as representation of the every day.

‘Jar Guards’ has its own cold inner spotlight of glinting glass and metal, a palette of grey with residue of colour held within empty jars and displayed on two mannequins in the foreground painted like bright jesters. Vronskaya’s use of colour is as powerful as it is sparing.

In ‘Rains All Day’ a streaked window, smiling toy teeth and empty jar upon the window sill is unexpectedly poignant, and ‘A Mass Grave’ of used paint tubes piled one on top of the other presents a menacing and beautiful study of humanity through still life.

Human experience and emotion seem to emanate from chosen objects that defy a fleeting glance. As spectators we are drawn into these works in a way that is satisfyingly compelling.

Peter White’s ‘Bowl I, ii and iii’ in mixed media reveals a fascinating technique of layering texture and materials with the solidity of slate or stone which feels more like a process of excavation than painting. These simple images of vessels are both beautiful and effective, especially hung together as a sequence.

As one would expect there are also new discoveries for the viewer including paintings by Hock–Aun Teh and Marj Bond, etchings by Ian Scott and sculpture by Hamish McKie. Ian Scott’s etchings of George Mackay Brown are portraits full of weathered sensitivity.

‘Seven Fold Silence’ has a fine surrealist quality akin to the collages of Max Ernst and ‘First Garden’ is a great example of the range of mark possible through the etching process surpassing the drawn line. Scott is an intriguing artist that I hope to see more of in future exhibitions. His work is proof that the art of original printmaking should not be underestimated.

Hamish McKie exhibits a range of work in bronze including the intimate scale of ‘Greyhound Running’ and larger works such as ‘Fossilised Crustacean’, which displays a wonderful range of patina that looks as if it has been dredged from beneath the ocean and layers of sediment.

As a study in raw movement ‘Greyhound Running’ is particularly striking and expressive. More roughly modelled than its companion pieces it is bursting with life and energy.

Marj Bond’s oil on paper works have a hazy pastel like softness which coupled with a palette of complimentary oranges and blues in a work like ‘Kerala Boatman’ convey an atmosphere of glowing heat and light.

Three of the smallest works, ‘Thanjavur Horseman’, ‘Indian II’ and ‘Indian Silk Seller’ were for me the most effective, with a strong blend of red and black composition.

Hock-Aun Teh’s canvases are executed with the force of a martial art. Wide gestural marks read like Tai Chi upon the surface and are combined with drip and splatter techniques associated with Abstract Expressionism.

Citing De Kooning as an influence, this Glasgow-based artist displays a strong interplay of elements, traditions and techniques from East and West. Hock-Aun Teh’s attitude to tradition is refreshing and dynamic:

“Old cultures need to be pushed forward and expanded and reinvented for each new age. Tradition should be like a fruit for us to eat and digest so that it may give us new energy”

‘Hogmanay’ seems to express this sentiment like a dance on the canvas in dominant red with splashes of orange, ochre and cerulean blue. It contains vitality both in the execution and the final image. The artist’s work and method raises important questions about how we engage creatively with “tradition” in a Scottish context. and this seems particularly apt in the current cultural climate.

The artist’s discipline, mastery of martial arts and Chinese calligraphy are layered with strong use of colour and humour. Hock-Aun Teh’s work is primarily about life force, making that vital spiritual and physical energy visible and tangible through the art of painting.

‘Feeding Wildbirds in the Garden’ with its dominant palette of yellow and range of gestural, splattered and dripping marks and ‘Making Tea on the Mongolian Plain’ in blue, aqua and black are two prominent examples. Thoroughly ancient and contemporary at the same time Hock-Aun Teh is a fascinating artist.

With a strong blend of new and familiar work Kilmorack Gallery’s latest show provides a vision of how it has emerged as one of Scotland’s best galleries over the last decade.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery
• Hock-Aun Teh

Gathering Swell by Allan MacDonald

THIS LATEST mixed exhibition combines excellent work by regular Kilmorack artists such as Eugenia Vronskaya, Peter White, Ingebjorg Smith, Helen Denerley, Leonie Gibbs, Robert McAulay, Allan Macdonald, Angus Clyne and Lotte Glob with new work from Eduard Bursudsky, Paul Bloomer, Allison Weightman, Helen Fay and Mo Farquharson.

One of the great pleasures of viewing work on a regular basis is seeing progression in an artist’s work and evidence of their creative skill at its height. This is certainly true of Allan Macdonald’s latest work “Sea Surge Strathy”, a magnificent painting which reveals superb handling of oils and a direct engagement with the power, delicacy and energy of nature.

The salt encrusted texture and vibrant brushwork combine flecks of liquid green under painting with gouged white spray against the permanence of solid rock and sky. This combination of elements and the skill of the artist are of equal measure.

“Moonstruck Melvich” (Oil on Board) is another example, a smaller scale but no less potent. Here the brush marks take on a finer quality, like that of an etching. This delicate texture offset by moonlight and a hint of red in the sky are deeply poetic and beautifully rendered.

Though known primarily for his landscape work, I hope to see the same skilled eye and creative energy in the artist’s next solo show, particularly in relation to his figurative paintings and portraiture. Further development of the creative intensity in his latest landscape work realised in his treatment of the human figure would elevate Macdonald’s work to yet another level.

Angus Clyne’s exquisite bowl in Burnt Ash with an incised inner relief pattern looks almost as if it were perfected by ancients in bronze and dug out of the earth. It is satisfying to see this sculptural element entering his work more literally in “Hole” and “Oak Forms”, but the star of this group of work is a bowl in Burnt Oak.

This blackened sculpted form reads like the rectangular cross section of a reverberating monumental droplet of liquid through the grain of the wood. It is a masterful piece of work and Clyne continues both to defy and raise expectations about the art of woodturning.

Sharmanka artist Eduard Bersudsky’s Burr Elm sculpture “Mermaid” is naturally languid in the bend of wood and tail. Known primarily for his kinetic sculpture the exhibition also contains examples of more typical fantastic figures with moving elements. “Mermaid” extends the sculptor’s use of the found object into the natural world and is a beautifully formed stand-alone piece.

Lotte Glob’s “Paper Clay Prints” are a great companion to her “Flower Pools” of varying scale. These slabs of molten solidity have the same mysterious quality as her fused books of rock, stone and clay. Like uncovering a slice of fossilised markings the surface of these two clay prints are both intricate and bold.

Peter White’s “Lanscape IV, V and VI”, a series in mixed media, are compact expressive pieces with slate-like layers of encaustic texture. Another strong series of small scale drawn heads are equally engaging and provide an intimate contrast to larger scale works previously exhibited by the artist at Kilmorack.

Another Ullapool based artist, Allison Weightman, displays some of her superb Raku works as part of the exhibition. Her pod-like vase and pierced pillow forms in ceramic are distinctive in their simplicity and elegance. These works contrast strongly with her shotgun ceramics as powerful statements of human vulnerability in clay.

It is wonderful to see the mixed media work of Shetland based artist Paul Bloomer as part of this latest show. “Winter Beach” with its high horizon, ebbs of foam and glint of sand through the painted surface it is a richly evocative work. “Midnight Snow”, with its strong brushwork, depth and bands of liquefied colour beneath frozen opaque white, is another example of emotive natural elements captured in layers of mixed media. An accomplished figurative painter and printmaker, I hope to see more of this artist’s work exhibited locally.

Winter is the perfect excuse to spend a couple of hours indoors exploring new work. This is a varied and enjoyable exhibition that enables the viewer to see new aspects in the work of the gallery’s regular artists and the opportunity explore previously unseen work.

© Georgina Coburn, 2006

Link

• Kilmorack Gallery

Detail from 'Iconostas'.

I THINK THE defining image of this show are three works hung at the far end of Kilmorack Gallery, a triptych of images which although they are separate, hang together to give the viewer a blinding and breathtaking view of Eugenia Vronskaya’s talent and insight.

The first is a large self ‘Portrait in a Red Jacket’ (oil on canvas) that vibrates with electric green brushwork in the background in striking contrast with the central figure. It holds your gaze and draws you in repeatedly, the under-sketch of queenly robes enveloping the figure. It is a stunning portrait, full of tenacity, assurance in its handling of paint, and movingly human in the liquid blue of the artist’s quizzical eyes.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is ‘Iconostas’ a collection of sixty portrait sketches hung together in a way that combines the experience of each person as one piece of work yet captures the character and energy of each individual sitter, many of whom are local artists.

Vronskaya explains: “Identity is a unique combination of common elements. We don’t learn anything new – we just explore the endless combination of the same. We all experience love, death, rejection, loss, spirituality and disappointment in our lives. Each Face speaks its own story; each face says the same thing.”

This is an outstanding solo show which should not be missed

‘Portrait of the Artist as a Man’ (oil on canvas) combines pink flesh with greenish shadow, defining the lithe body of a young man against a pure white background. It is a potent creative statement by a woman at the height of her powers as an artist.

For me it represents a kind of creativity that has nothing to do with gender and defies the normal judgement we would apply to a female nude or to notions of feminine creativity through the body. It is a contradiction which turns the world on its head as great art should.

Despite the strength and assurance of her art, Vronskaya also displays – in work such as ‘Surrender’ – the game of art, a chase that never ends. In this still life a white flag hovers over tubes of paint and the presence of a child’s toy. The artist’s characteristic cool palette of greys and green with accents of red plays with the truth behind all artists’ practice, that you never quite reach the vision and surrender the battle until the next time you pick up a brush.

Vronskaya displays in her still lives unexpected edginess, both beauty and menace. It is hard to imagine anyone else rendering a pile of empty jars beautiful, but she succeeds in doing just that in works such as ‘Yellow Door Jars’ and ‘Winter Jars’. In ‘Cornered’ the cramped overlap of the space against the glistening of glass surfaces makes the pile beautifully claustrophobic.

‘Eternal Couple’, depicting dead pheasants hung against the cool blue of a window, with children’s toys on the window sill, is typical of the juxtaposition of objects which makes the act of seeing the familiar so unsettling. ‘Death Mask and Little People’, with the buzz of green hues and brushstrokes outside seen through the menacing hollow of the mouth and window, are instantly threatening.

‘Window’ also displays these characteristics to great effect. The blur of the world outside in grey and green brushstrokes gives way to an acidic yellow sky with black skeletal trees on the horizon stripped by the dampness of winter. A grey teddy hangs upside down, glass jars perched precariously with a face mask and child’s toys on the window sill.

Even with the traditional safe genre of painting still life, the artist never lets the audience get too comfortable. This is one of her most admirable qualities.

Charcoal drawings displayed in the vestry such as ‘Study III’ and ‘Study I’ are superb examples of the sensitivity wrought by study of the human figure, a foundation for work such as ‘Northern Angel’ and ‘Back and Toes’(both oils on canvas). These two pieces are also highlights of the exhibition in terms of their depiction of the figure.

‘Northern Angel’ is a beautifully accomplished study of humanity. The figure is subtlety lit, head bowed, shoulders drawn into the frailty of human flesh with only the barest suggestion of wings against the dark back ground.

‘Back and Toes’ would seem unfinished, and yet it has all the visual information we need to complete the picture. In this and in ‘Missing Mum’, Vronskaya manages to achieve what many artists would envy, the freshness, and energy of a sketch with the permanence of painting.

This is an outstanding solo show which should not be missed.

© Georgina Coburn, 2006

Links

• Kilmorack Gallery
• John Byrne’s Introduction to the Exhibition

Across Sanna Bay to Eigg and Rum by Sarah Carrington.

THIS LATEST SHOW from Kilmorack Gallery is true to form, with regular artists such as James Hawkins, Leonie Gibbs, Helen Denerley, Robert McAulay, Ingeborg Smith, Angus Clyne, James McCallum and Kirsty Cohen side-by-side with a selection of new talent.

What makes this gallery a pleasure to visit is the ability of its director, Tony Davidson, to uncover new work and yield a few surprises, a quality not often present in many commercial galleries. This current group exhibition is no exception.

Ronald Rae, best known for his monumental granite sculptures, is represented here with a variety of work which draws upon the most basic need for human beings to create art. Stylistically it has a timeless simplicity that alludes to ancient monumental sculpture.

‘Broken Fish’ (Granite, 88cm x 55cm) is a simply incised form divided by a break in the stone. For me the eyes of the animal recall the cup markings of Bronze Age sculpture and it exudes the same kind of mystery and hidden ritual that is present in looking at Pictish art.

Similarly ‘Viking Head’ (Russian granite, 88cm x 55cm) recalls early Celtic sculpture in the form of the head. The same kind of form is found in Irish female “sheela-nagig” figures, although here the nose and mouth can be read as symbolically male.

Overall the exhibition successfully mixes the work of established and emerging artists in a space which invites the viewer to stop, pause and spend time enjoying individual works.

Also new to the gallery, Holly Frean has exhibited a series of oils on board that cleverly explore the idea of looking at art in a gallery setting. ‘Look At Me’ depicts a silhouetted figure cropped at the edge of the piece looking at the form of a painting in muted greys with loosely handled ochre under painting.

The work is characterised by freshness in the style of brushwork, a subdued palette and a cool intellectual stance in exploring the relationship between the audience and a work of art.

‘Up On Pedestals’ is a small but largely ironic painting showing two clearly male spectators in silhouette. Between them two busts are displayed on the plinths of a typical gallery white space. One gets the feeling that the stature of these two men according to their gender (because no details define them personally) is all artifice.

‘The Strayed Sheep’ also made me smile. Painted in a similar fashion, a schoolgirl has strayed from the group and stares into the sparse texture of a single painting. Here as in the other two pieces the figures are only painted loosely and in silhouette but are still capable of giving the painting a wry narrative.

Sculptor David Williams Ellis’s smaller works in bronze more than make up for the loin clothed 19th century cliché of his large bronze ‘Aphrodite’.

‘Tumbler I, II and III’ are a dynamic series of figures at different stages of movement. These are beautifully displayed in relation to each other so that the flow of the body in space is uninterrupted. Also on display are more static but expressive squatting figures, ‘Watcher III and IV’ in a green bronze patina, and ‘WE 9’ and ‘W12’.

While these sculptures in blue patina have the feel of small studies, they are sensitively rendered in a way which suggests their potential as larger scale works. ‘WE9’, a female figure with head downcast, and ‘W12’, a contemplative male figure, are both equally expressive. His larger scale bronze ‘Louise II’, legs drawn up and head bowed into an inwardly crouched pose is slightly smaller than life but far greater in stature than his upright goddess ‘Aphrodite’.

A series of mixed media pieces on board by Sarah Carrington reward the viewer with closer inspection. Carrington displays a remarkably light touch and a range of mark that evokes land and sea.

‘Chalbha Bay, Iona’, a small rectangular drawing, is an excellent example, perfectly in tune with the spirit of place. Here the barest line is wonderfully descriptive. There is a lightness of touch synonymous with mood.

‘Across Sanna Bay to Eigg and Rum’ displays a more layered approach, with various media creating contrast and depth in the scene. The white sand and turquoise blue of the ocean together with the light and varied drawn marks in the foreground create a feeling of ease and peace.

‘Storm Approaching, Isle Of Gigha’ conveys a different mood, a darker low-banded landscape of oppressive blue, still with a sensitive range of mark. There is nothing heavy handed in the artist’s approach to her subject.

‘Leaded Skies, West Coast, Iona Study III’, a larger mixed media triptych, depicts a carefully sloping diagonal sky weighted down into ultramarine in the darkest right hand panel. The gradation of colour from light to dark, left to right is subtly balanced and again the foreground is delicately defined.

A former student of the Glasgow School of Art, Marj Bond has contributed a series of square oils on canvas. The two most accomplished in terms of composition are ‘Diwali’, a complex arrangement in blue, and ‘Marakesh Window’, which recalls the work of Paul Klee.

Here abstracted flattened planes of colour in warm tones of orange, ochre and umber are successfully balanced. The painting is successful as an evocation of the subject but also as an abstract arrangement of form and colour.

Overall the exhibition successfully mixes the work of established and emerging artists in a space which invites the viewer to stop, pause and spend time enjoying individual works.

A catalogue of current work on show can be requested from the gallery.

This show is open Thursday-Sunday, 11am-5.30pm and by arrangement (01463 783230).

© Georgina Coburn, 2006

Link

• Kilmorack Gallery

Unbound Love, Leonie Gibbs. © Kilmorack Gallery

WITH CHRISTMAS FAST approaching and the cold weather upon us, Kilmorack and Castle Galleries provide a great excuse to head indoors to view and purchase some exceptional work.

Kilmorack Gallery is true to form in its representation of its regular artists and the introduction of striking new work. Included in the Gallery’s Christmas show are works by Allan MacDonald, Lotte Glob, James Hawkins, Michael Forbes, James MacCallum, Leonie Gibbs, Eugene Vronskya, Peter White, Ronald Rae, Shona Leitch, Angus Clyne and Helen Denerley

Denerley as always displays amazing ingenuity and skill in her transformation of reclaimed mechanical parts into sculpted animal forms. ‘Douglas’, a lemur sculpted from motorbike and industrial parts, is no exception and is the form and essence of this animal brought to life.

Glenfinnan artist Angus Clyne’s large ‘Elm Vessel’ is a stunning piece with a sandblasted surface that has all the timeless form and presence of an ancient ceramic dug from the earth. There is something very elemental about the way this artist works with the natural shape and grain of his hardwood materials.
‘Maple Bowl’ is another example. The pale coloured wood contrasts with the blackened rim reminiscent in shape of a mountain range encircling the bowl. There is a sense of the monumental in this work that is seldom seen in the art of woodturning.

Eugene Vronskaya’s solo show next summer at Kilmorack promises to be one of the most exciting exhibitions scheduled for next year.

Leonie Gibbs has a number of works on display including oil on canvas, bronze sculpture and mixed media on paper. The poetic and idealised ‘Unbounded Love’ and ‘Chased’ are two sculptures in bronze that are deeply romantic in sentiment but no less affecting.

‘Chased’ depicts one figure turned from the other with the plinth on which they stand stretched out between them in an evocation of yearning, while ‘Unbounded Love’ fuses two figures together in the line of their mutual vision, one winged, the other human.

Both the oil on canvas ‘Oh My Ass’ and series of mixed media works ‘Highland Line’ 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 are reminiscent in style of ‘The Blue Rider’ group of German Expressionists, both in colour and loose handling of brushwork. After a successful show in London I hope we may see more of Gibbs’ painting exhibited in the Highlands.

The oil paintings of Eugene Vronskaya in this exhibition have a quiet but intense psychological impact that is achieved not primarily with colour but in the grey focus on everyday familiar objects. Vronskaya seems to merge the familiar with a shadow of violence and the macabre, then just as quickly diffuses this sinister quality with the humour in her painting titles.

This quality comes to the fore in a work like ‘Morning Massacre, a black glove slung over the taps of a familiar kitchen sink, an eerie shadow cast by the toy soldiers on the table, and the only real colour in this grey world the bright green of the washing up liquid and a bloody suggestion in paint on a dead bird’s neck.

‘The Baron’s Flying Machine’ (oil on board) and ‘Preparing For Take Off’ have a child-like playfulness which is somehow denied by the artist’s palette. Similarly, ‘First Snow’, a window ledge still life of black gloves, a grotesque mask and child’s toys, has a chill in it that has nothing to do with the weather depicted outside as the first flakes of snow begin to fall.

Her work has great strength as well as ambiguity and her solo show next summer at Kilmorack promises to be one of the most exciting exhibitions scheduled for next year.

Ronald Rae, an artist normally associated with his large scale sculptural works in granite, has three mixed media works exhibited at Kilmorack that evoke the primitive both in style and in their reference to indigenous and ancient cave art.

These are powerful drawings that for me relate to a timeless desire to create which is an intrinsic and defining part of human nature. I hope too to see more of this artist’s work in future exhibitions.

THE CASTLE GALLERY’S latest show is an Aladdin’s cave for anyone looking for a unique gift for someone special.

In addition to regular artists such as Blandine Anderson, Ian McWhinnie, Karolina Larusdottir, Trevor Price, Eoghan Bridge and Alilsa Hyslop, there are new surprises and a well chosen selection of seasonally themed pieces on show.

Glass decorations by Sioban Johns, metal gold and red decorations by Sharon McSwiney and small angel glass panels and bowls by Julie Langan are examples of festive adornment for the home at its best.

Lyn Antley’s finely engraved earring designs of mermaids, climbing tigers, and hares and stars meld folklore into copper and silver.

There are many smaller affordable pieces in this exhibition that dispel the myth that handmade equals outrageous expense. A wide range of media are represented in the exhibition including textiles, prints, glass, woodwork, jewellery, prints, paintings, ceramics and sculpture, and amongst this work there are many unique and beautiful works, both functional and aesthetic.

Kate Allsop’s small bowls and porcelain spoons with simply drawn decoration are appealing both for their fineness and naïve simplicity. They have a nostalgic, childlike quality to them that is quite beautiful.

Fife artist Hilke MacIntyre’s unusual ceramic reliefs such as ‘Cat and Bird ed 3’ and ‘Castle and Garden ed 14’ reminded me of the various stages of a linocut retained and fused together in a new medium. These small plaques are intriguing new pieces and I look forward to seeing more of this artist’s work in print and ceramic.

Jewellery is a particular strength in this show with each artist displaying a distinct style. Elegant contemporary silver spoons and earrings by Anne Lindsay, Anna DeVille’s whimsical ‘Spotted Bird’ brooch and necklace, or the mythic designs of Lyn Antley are all excellent examples of fine craftsmanship and strikingly original design.

Antley’s finely engraved earring designs of mermaids, climbing tigers, and hares and stars meld folklore into copper and silver. Edinburgh artist Colin Duncan uses cross sections of scrap metal to create unique pieces of jewellery from the unlikeliest of source materials to great effect.

Another highlight of this exhibition for me is the work of Scott Irvine, which brilliantly combines fused glass and wood in bowls and abstract sculptural forms. His ‘Arc Sculpture – Abstract Purple’ is a superb example in fused glass and sycamore wood. The vivid luminous colour and shape of the glass is successfully integrated into the dominant curved design in wood.

The surfaces of glass and wood are extremely tactile and the unlikely combination of them together greatly enhances the unique sensuous qualities of each material.

David Carson Shaw’s vibrant acrylic paintings ‘A Message From Syracuse’, with its vibrating dreamlike layers of colour, and ‘Flight in September’ in vibrant purple are small scale delicate works with great presence.

Castle Gallery will present mixed exhibitions in January and February of the new year, and their first solo show of 2006, The Art of Shazia Mahmood, opens in March.

Both Castle Gallery and Kilmorack are part of the Scottish Arts Council’s ‘Own Art’ scheme.

© Georgina Coburn, 2005

Links

• Castle Gallery website
• Kilmorack Gallery website

Orkney Cliffs by Kirstie Cohen.

KILMORACK GALLERY’S latest show by local artists Kirsty Cohen and Alan Macdonald offers two very different approaches to painting.

Cohen, well known for her misty, romantic landscapes has developed a kind of “signature” work. Her painting is a painstaking process where multiple layers of paint are delicately applied to create space, depth and movement in land and seascape.

Whilst this latest body of work offers exploration of colour and light and the paintings are atmospheric, moody and evocative, their uniqueness is lost as the whole series is viewed. Essentially there is nothing that we have not seen before in her work.

Her technique is accomplished, and while I have no doubt that Cohen is a talented artist, the glimpse of spirit and development seen in her drawing in Kilmorack’s ‘Works on Paper’ show was strangely absent from these paintings. I feel that she is capable of so much more than this body of work would suggest and that her talent is lost in the ether of her technique, with predictable results.

One or two of these paintings standing alone have infinitely more impact than half a gallery of them. ‘Mountain waterfall’ and ‘Hill Snow II’ are good examples of Cohen’s signature, the first shrouded in mist depicting the elemental flow of water over landscape and the second creating depth through finely executed layers of paint.

The artist’s work tends not to be bound to specific places but is part of a more “carthartic” process. This makes ‘Orkney Cliffs’ quite interesting in its actual attachment to a location. Although Cohen is successful in exploring visually ideas of “diffusion, suspension and reflection” through her approach and technique, this body of work left me feeling indifferent. While I can respect the time, energy and effort of her technique, one painting ran very much into the next.

What struck me most about MacDonald’s work is the sense of his exploration of his materials and the art of painting that made me want to see more.

‘Shona’ (oil on canvas) and ‘Claire’ are two examples of great observation and technique combined with the individual human qualities of the sitters. While ‘Claire’ is the most subdued of the portraits in terms of colour and feeling, it demonstrates beautifully the interior mood of the subject with an artist sensitive enough to see and capture it.

Macdonald does not have to use strong colour or an energetic paint-caked surface to get our attention. ‘Claire’ may be a downcast painting but it is certainly a memorable one.

His portrait “Sarah” with its strong side lighting and arresting frontal gaze (though more obvious) is also impossible to walk past. Similarly a small figurative work ‘reclining’ (oil bar on watercolour) is a beautiful piece that beckons contemplation.

Among the landscapes ‘White Out’ is a painting that seems to lead your imagination into it with its invisible peak, the treatment of the foreground primarily of yellow ochre is contrasted with the vertical brushstrokes of the midsection of water leading the eye into the mountain beyond. Use of colour is accented by the glass over oil framing and the strength and atmosphere of this painting invites you to linger over this work.

Three paintings stood out for me in terms of their handling and use of colour. ‘Liathach’ uses stratified layers of paint like rock to achieve a sense of the climb and a sense of distance. ‘Nocturne Diabaig’( also behind glass) is a shimmering work of midnight blue and aqua, layers of bark and water highlighted by starlight, and ‘Winter Sun, Torridon’ (oil on canvas) contains complimentary blues and oranges, impasto yellow ochre and aqua to great effect.

All three prove that a violent Hawkins-esque riot of colour isn’t always necessary in contemporary landscape painting. It is this kind of fine tuning rather than empty flashy effects that makes viewing MacDonald’s painting such an intriguing experience. This artist is on a very interesting journey.

What struck me most about MacDonald’s work is the sense of his exploration of his materials and the art of painting that made me want to see more. He can more than hold his own solo show, and demonstrates a varied approach to different subject matter that is both engaging and satisfying.

© Georgina Coburn, 2005

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

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.

© Georgina Coburn, 2005

Related Links:

• Kilmorack Gallery website

Spring Exhibition 2005 at Kilmorack Gallery

IT IS fascinating and satisfying to see both progression and range of technique by an artist within one show. Robert McAulay’s paintings in acrylics display a range of texture, from the most delicate drawn line to spattered impasto.

From the subdued colours of his “Shrouded” series in atmospheric blue to the mystery of the “Half Light” and “Obscured View” series, McAulay invites the eye and the mind of the viewer to bring their own memories and impressions to bear upon the sparsely sketched descriptions of rooftops, chimneys and skeletal trees. These are intriguing works not overloaded with visual cues to describe a scene or idea, but subtle, engaging and mysterious. These “obscured view[s]” invite us to draw our own conclusions. McAulay’s approach to painting is both refreshing and honest.

“I like mystery. I say little about my own work. I do not want everything explained to me. I like to discover for myself”.

As a viewer I found it a real joy to “discover for myself” the delicate lines, faint light from windows and minute silhouettes that make up this world of half shadow. There is a sensitivity in this soft twilight that is extremely engaging.

In contrast his “Emergence I” and ” II” displays a more robust approach, and the introduction of more colour. Here a central frame of light provides a focal point and was almost triptych-like in its composition, a strong visual device. Brushstrokes are more energetic but McAulay never resorts to unrestrained colour or mark. Instead there seems to be a more mindful control of the elements in the work that only comes from a deep understanding of the Art of painting.

The way in which the exhibition is hung also provides a wonderful insight into the range of his work. The handling becomes more wilful  and leads in beautifully to the next group of works. challenging at each turn the impression formed by the last series of paintings.

“Red Wreck”, “Journey’s End” and “Three Ruins and a Wreck” are all characterised by their bold yet restrained use of strong colour, built up surfaces and thick spattered paintwork. The mood of these paintings is best summed up ironically by the smallest work of the group, “Cooker”, which depicts an abandoned appliance in a field on the outskirts of a settlement we can just make out on the horizon. It seemed to me a strong ecological comment on human dwelling.

“Hanna’s handling of paint translates to the liquefied flow of water and the strength in layers of cliffs.”

The handling of this material beautifully captures the rhythm of movement through every muscle and sinew of the animal’s body. From the turn of the neck to the gestured tip of the tail these sculptures really capture the character of each subject and the spirit of the horse itself.

“Fortune Filly” is the largest of these works and can be fully appreciated from the upper gallery, where the form and movement can best be seen to life scale. Up close the inner curves and core of the animal are revealed in each piece of weathered wood. Smaller scale works such as “Ballantyne Lad” (driftwood) or “Rufus” (bronze) are just as strongly infused with character and vitality as the larger scale work.

Well represented in public and private collections worldwide, Nael Hanna’s abstract sea and landscapes reveal the “sheer beauty and magnetism” that draws the artist to his subject. “Home of the Highlands” with its earthy browns and moss greens, varnished wet saturated surface and cascade of impasto water beautifully captures the feel of a uniquely Scottish landscape.

Hanna’s handling of paint translates to the liquefied flow of water and the strength in layers of cliffs. His “West Haven Sunset” is charged with a surge of thick white impasto in a sea of grey and red glow. Born in Iraq, Hanna attended Art College in Dundee, and in the last twenty years has progressively taken his place within a recognisably Scottish school of painting.

In comparison Hanna’s still life “Two Vases”, though a more intimate subject, takes no less delight in paint and its application in a strong and energised way. There is real energy and natural force in every work, a smaller scale piece such as “West Coast of Scotland” or still life is no less powerful. “West Haven Panorama” with its defining grey, red and blacks creates an atmosphere and presence that only comes through keen observation, not just of land or seascape but the spirit in sea, land and sky.

© Georgina Coburn, 2005

Related Links:

• Kilmorack Gallery website