Beauty and Rage – Pinkie Maclure’s ‘Brigid in Dualchas’

Posted on May 31, 2022 by Georgina Coburn

Pinkie Maclure ‘Brigid in Dualchas’ (2022, stained glass and lightbox, 65cm x 62cm)
Photograph by Tony Davidson, Kilmorack Gallery.

Radically transforming the art of stained glass, Pinkie Maclure’s latest work brings feminine power and the climate crisis brilliantly into focus.

Pinkie Maclure’s Brigid in Dualchas feels like a songline, tapping deep into the earth and our collective unconscious through storytelling. It is an image of origin, crisis and ultimately, hope. Illuminated in glass, a medium as fragile as humanity, Maclure’s Brigid takes full possession of beauty and rage. Rendered with consummate skill, this goddess of pre-Christian Ireland becomes conduit and cure, a contemporary icon of emboldening solidarity and potential change. All Maclure’s work presents the viewer with a knife edge of burgeoning consciousness and action, here contrasting ‘the old traditions and worship of nature with our contemporary abuse of nature and the resulting climate crisis.’

Brigid (Brighde or Bride in Scotland) is a deity of keening and healing, a protector of nature and an apt patron saint for the Anthropocene era we are living in. In a global context circa 2022, her luminous presence is a confrontation. Reappraisal of feminine power, not as ‘other’ but as an intrinsic aspect of all life and creation, has never been more urgent and cuts through all cultures and gender identification. Maclure’s Brigid is a sacred flaming red flag to reconnect with ancient, indigenous knowledge, not just to survive, but to reclaim life on this planet in all its eternal mystery and wonder.

The idea of ‘Dualchas’ in the Gaelic tradition, which ‘refers to the intimate bonds that exist between the natural world, the land and its people, transmitted through generations’ is communicated in the female figure placed centre stage, described by the artist as the goddess ‘in her element.’

Pinkie Maclure Detail- ‘Brigid in Dualchas’ (2022, stained glass and lightbox)
Photograph by Tony Davidson, Kilmorack Gallery

Maclure’s composition is alive with free association. Colour radiates through layered glass in a strong, opposing palette of bloody red and divine blue, evocative of earthly and spiritual planes. Brigid is engulfed in red, a colour which drenches her arms and hands ‘Carrie’ style, while her softly glowing face, eyes closed, is pure repose. There’s great ambiguity here, between a defiant, enduring lifeforce and potential carnage being unleashed. Microbes on finely etched tree branches are underpinned by a vestige of pattern, akin to Medieval stained glass, shining beneath. The smallest details are held aloft by all that has come before, layer upon layer of concept, craft and understanding. In Maclure’s own words;

‘I sandblast, paint, fire, engrave and layer glass and relish the inherent chaos of such an unpredictable medium. The slowness of the process lets me access subconscious, dreamlike imagery and tell stories linking real-life, contemporary experiences with historical texts, characters, and events.’

Pinkie Maclure’s art is a masterful union of ideas and technique which encompasses the entire spectrum of art practice. Like the figure of Brigid in Dualchas, the artist’s upward diagonal path of pure neon lightening may be framed in linear black and white geometry, but this in no way contains her. Brigid moves beyond the upper frame of the composition, pulsing with colour and energy. This petal like radiation of lead line, form and colour bring order and meaning out of chaos. It is pure Zeitgeist, but it is more than that.

The goddess is resolutely complex and complete, divine and human, seen in a Christ-like pose. Associations with the crucifixion, of suffering, sorrow and resurrection, not of God’s only son, but of the world are invoked. Saint Brigid’s feast day, 1^st February, heralds spring or Imbolc, celebrating new life out of dark winter stasis. Maclure celebrates life giving creativity as an essential drive, in nature and us, linked with eternal cycles of life and death. Brigid’s clenched hands hold twigs like anode and cathode charges, grasping the mettle of all creation with open arms, much like the artist herself. Brigid in Dualchas is an image of feminine creative power beyond childbirth, in possession of self and body.

The stained-glass composition hinges on a ‘v’ of pubic hair, like the stem of a winged seed, the centre of a flower or a veined petal. It is an unexpected, radical bloom, presenting the female body in an uncompromising, completely organic way, ironically unseen for centuries. Maclure describes the red scratch marks on Brigid’s legs as ‘reminiscent of the graffiti you sometimes see carved into trunks of trees, reflecting the brutalisation of nature and women. Her legs are like the trunk of a tree, still standing despite decades of abuse.’ Significantly, the artist does not define the female figure with these marks. Maclure renders Brigid’s toes delicately mortal pink, her legs glowing pale green, not a deathly pallor, but one of burgeoning life and awakening. Leaves of green and yellow diffuse from her body and birds are silhouetted around a nest of blackened hair. There is nothing idealised here, jagged edges are part of the pattern and flow, held in radiant light. The fiery ignition of thought and instinct are all consuming, in making and seeing.

Maclure radically reinterprets the story of Brigid, ‘associated with perpetual, sacred flames, surrounded by a hedge which no man could cross. Men who attempted to cross were said to have been cursed to go insane, die or be crippled.’ The artist extends this idea to the current climate crisis, acknowledging the truth in the legend, of entire ecosystems. ‘Hedges are very important habitats for wildlife and for the prevention of wildfires,’ which have engulfed the planet. The element of fire, like the goddess herself is ambiguous and multifaceted, triple faced in her most ancient form.

The expression on Brigid’s face, a deeply meditative, active subconscious, calls upon us to collectively awaken and remember through ancient stories. The cathedrals of old encouraged the viewer to look up and be elevated, and in her own inimitable way, Maclure encourages us to do the same, reaching down through the foundations of belief to the site of origin, buried deep beneath the church. This is a different kind of power to that which currently blights our world, one that leads creatively towards hope.

Pinkie Maclure artist’s website: https://www.pinkiemaclure.net/

PART TWO 2017

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Georgina Coburn

EOGHAN BRIDGE, FIONNA CARLISLE, SAM CARTMAN,KIRSTIE COHEN, ALAN MACDONALD.

Kilmorack Gallery, 27 May – 5 August.

Sweet Mystery (Ceramic) by Eoghan Bridge.

Kilmorack’s latest exhibition of solo statements by five individual artists works beautifully in the whole space, joyfully punctuated by sculptor Eoghan Bridge’s latest body of work. Introducing vivid primary colours into his Art, Bridge is knowing, playful and often poignant in its treatment of the human figure, balanced against the recurrent archetypal figure of the horse. This essential relationship feels like an extension of self in equine form, deriving strength and stability from the unconscious. It’s a circular dynamic where the powerful stability of the horse and the vulnerability of the human rider are symbolically entwined. Work such as Trojan (Ceramic) cleverly places one figure inside and in relation to another in an abstracted inner love triangle, playing with the Classical myth of the Trojan horse and whole idea of emotional and psychological defences. Jungian psychology; animus (the feminine inner personality in men) and anima (the masculine inner personality in women) linked to creative process also comes to mind. This isn’t theoretically implicit in Bridge’s work, but there is an aspect of striving to balance emotion, instinct, vision, form, human and animal aspects of the psyche at the base of his work which always fascinates. Human figures are often dwarfed by the animal form supporting them in elevation, or inverted with the horse balanced precariously above. Seated human figures fold in on themselves, faces hidden in melancholic withdrawal or poised in acrobatic movement, reminiscent of the joy and wonder felt being taken to the circus as a child, tinged with a captive edge of sadness. When I Close My Eyes (Ceramic) is a beautiful example, with the seated human figure cast in a sorrowful, introspective posture, facing a horse poetically doing a handstand with upright stability, balancing a red ball with its hooves. Face to face the horse looks like a best friend, partner or inner companion being a metaphorical rock, attempting to make us laugh our way out of grief, loss or isolation.

There is great joy and humour in Bridge’s work but also compelling fragility. In Up and Away (Ceramic) the human figure is tethered to a bright cadmium red balloon horse held aloft by an uncoiled, spring like umbilical cord of thought and feeling. The inflatable horse is almost comic, invested with the tension of colour and form about to potentially burst into life. The balloon horse feels like hope as a life line extending from the human figure, resiliently poised with its hooves steadfast, holding up the infinite imaginative space above it which the figure is blind to in the moment. On one level it is quite whimsical, a surreal, improbable juxtaposition and yet it feels very much like the existential reality of being human. Kiss my Rider (Ceramic) connects the geometrically square horse with a buttoned mane of Mondrian primary colour, to the bent human figure, both rendered in pure white. The horse is defying its weight and gravity, balancing upon its nose on the back of a female figure, bent not uncomfortably double. Her hair is styled into a dairy swirl cone point and her figure is childlike, suggesting a process of creative development, enabling her to support the form she’s still flexible enough to hold aloft. The horse miraculously rotates when guided by the hand, adding a dimension of animated delight into a work which instantly made me smile.

Party Time (Ceramic) by Eoghan Bridge.

In Sweet Mystery (Ceramic) an outstretched, youthful, masculine figure is balanced along the horse’s back, supporting a cobalt blue balloon in his mouth and a horse’s head with his feet. The horse supporting the rider beneath gracefully bows its head in a role reversal of quiet vulnerability. Narratives are triggered from each angle of interlocking, natural dependency and through awareness of positive/ negative space in three dimensions. Party Time (Ceramic) is a technically ingenious work where Human figures are gathered, alienated and alone in jovial suspension, supported by the tabular, equine form of their collective unconscious. They are all connected but that isn’t their conscious experience above the surface, where eyes never meet and each figure is absorbed in their own gaze. The horse as an archetypal symbol of grounded power and unbridled freedom forms a richly meditative sculptural base for exploring the human condition. Bridge’s strength is that he understands positive and negative spaces physically, aesthetically and psychologically. What I love about this work is the supreme care in crafting the delicate patina of ceramic; seemingly transforming it into the green, oxidised sheen of bronze. This is contrasted with glorious, emotive accents of colour in pure, yellow, red and blue, unexpected bursts of joyous humour and the intriguing possibilities of multi-layered interpretation. Bridge’s work is enjoyable and thoughtful in equal measure.

Mountain Rock I (Mixed Media) by Kirstie Cohen.

Regular visitors to Kilmorack will be familiar with Kirstie Cohen’s Northern landscape paintings in oils, however this latest body of work incorporating mixed media, collage and drawn figurative elements allows the artist greater latitude, bringing a spirit of bolder experimentation into play with her signature paint handling. Mountain Rock I (Mixed Media, 50 x 50cm) is akin to Chinese ink drawings and paintings, communicating the essence of Nature with monochrome strength and economy. Mountainous forms created from collaged black brush work on paper are given weight, substance and texture, with flourishes of opaque, fluid handling, delicately feathered edges of pigment and torn edges of rag paper contributing to the subtlety of textural marks. There’s a feeling of focused energy in the flow of water, ancient rock, depth of reflection blocked in black and the movement of torn horizontal strips of cloud above. The image sits confidently between abstraction and recognisable natural forms and this spirit of experimentation has also informed the artist’s work in oils. Cloudscape Study (Oil on board, 30 x 40cm) is a fine example, with a hovering mass of softly striated rain bled into pure, vivid, turquoise and deepening hues of quiet turbulence. The mid ground is fixed with striated marks and finely scraped impasto, golden yellow accents drawing the eye into an atmospheric space between the water and sky.

The Gathering I (Mixed Media) by Kirstie Cohen.

In The Gathering I (Mixed media, 35 x 40cm) Cohen’s fusion of the drawn human figure with elements of nature and multi-layered abstraction present an ancestral vision in ochre, turquoise, green and indigo. The sketched figures emerge and recede into shadow and tree forms with densely spun branches anchor the triangular composition in an apex of light. This sense of experimentation in the studio brings strength and regenerative energy to Cohen’s characteristic approach to landscape and it is wonderful to see this evolution in her work.

Caley Salsa (Acrylic on paper) by Fionna Carlisle.

Fionna Carlisle’s strongest works in the show emerge from vibrations of colour, rhythm and music combined with the human figure. Drillfloor from Doghouse, Alwyn North (Acrylic on Paper, 79x 67cm) depicts a whirl of human industry in orange hardhats, flashes of pink and yellow protective clothing and heavy, black lines of rapidly sketched movement. This expressionistic handling becomes a painterly celebration of life, colour and movement in Caley Salsa (Acrylic on paper, 58 x 64cm). With a lucid palette reminiscent of Franz Marc, Carlisle’s loose brushwork fills every part of the picture plane creating its own carnival-like rhythm. Cool, deep blue and flashes of emerald wash vibrate against the heat of yellow, pink, orange and red as figures fragment, joyously losing themselves in the dance. When seen alongside paintings which place the human figure, colour and movement centre stage ( both in terms of the artist’s paint handling and treatment of the subject) Carlisle’s still life works and smaller static studies of musicians feel less convincing and immersive, reading like decorative surfaces in comparison.

Tracklines, The Loch (Oil on board) by Sam Cartman.

Sam Cartman’s unique, abstract focus on rural landscapes, abandoned and semi industrial sites is fused with exploration of formal composition, paint handling and drawn marks to create strong, unified paintings, leading the eye into the work in surprising ways. Incorporating flat planes of industrial greens, greys, white, marine blue and yellow with restrained accents of red and orange, Carrtman’s palette is decidedly man-made in terms of pigment and control. Move closer and determinate contrasts of line, unexpected delicacy of drawn marks, fluid washes of underpainting and textured ground begin to emerge, contrasted with the bold, planar treatment of buildings, land and sky. Typically human figures are entirely absent in the artist’s work, communicating an eerie, forsaken quality in the landscape , however it is the drawn mark of a human hand, usually scratched into thicker swathes of paint which draw the viewer into the image. Tracklines, The Loch (Oil on board, 91.5 x 122cm) is a good example with the expanded width of track becoming the viewer’s foreground. Pencil marks lead us into the distance to a higher horizon line, defined with blue/ red built structures and fluid yellow hills. The shallow tonal range of mint green in the sky and land create an atmosphere of stillness as we set out following the tracery of human marks across an agricultural landscape. Whilst the Romantic myth of wild Scotland prevails, dominating landscape painting in the form of misty mountains, colourful seas and atmospheric moorland, Cartman’s vision is grounded in a landscape transformed by cultivation. The profound white silence of winter in Lambing Tracks (Oil on board, 61 x 74cm), spatially divided with planes of grey and icy blue are, on closer inspection, tempered with fine details of mark, tone and texture. The red, linear horizon line encompasses the abstracted form of a barn roof and clustered outbuildings in angular black and sky blue. In many ways it is a desolate space reinterpreted by the artist in formal compositional terms, creating a strange kind of beauty. The crux of this is how colour, line, form, texture and tone are balanced in the image as a whole. Ae Forest Study (Mixed Media, 15 x 21cm) punches far above its modest scale in that respect as a beautifully realised fusion of pictorial elements. Glimpses of yellow and pink emerge through the grey and aqua blue/ green progression of forms and pencil marks, leading us down the road into the journey of the image. The cool, assured palette beckons us into a space which is ultimately greater than the physical dimensions of the picture plane.

Pop III (Oil on board) by Alan Macdonald.

Informed by the canon of Art History, the techniques of old Masters and consumer Pop Culture, Alan Macdonald’s lively, sophisticated paintings always contain a gleeful element of play. With the exception of Hungry Hearts (Oil on Linen, 45’ x 36’) which includes an uncharacteristically clumsy cartoon character trope, Macdonald is on top form. Pop III (Oil on board, 12’ x 14’) is a work of playful genius, a wry and beautifully executed puzzle of a painting. Macdonald frames the middle aged bearded male protagonist in a series of locked/ keyholed panels or hidden drawers, flanked by two delicate wooden columns, one painted decoratively in blue stripes aligned with a bluish bubble in the lower left of the painting. Positioned above the central portrait is the tantalising museum-like display of a wire skewer, just out of reach, daring the viewer to disrupt the scene by bursting bubbles. The protagonist’s historical costume has another instrument of deflation in the safety pin attached to his collar. It’s an emblem of shared mischief between artist and audience, like the sphere of pink bubble gum in his mouth and anticipation of the inevitable “pop” of sound and meaning. His cap is tethered to the left hand side of the frame, supported precariously with a small rope tied bag which resembles a balloon losing air. The word POP is planted beneath the masculine Father figure as a multi-layered punchline. This is Macdonald doing what he does best, grappling with the truth of being a man and an artist in the serious playground of the studio.

The Prophets of Doom (Oil on board, 10’ x 16’) delivers a visual judgement by definition in the text planted at the base of the figure with Black defined as an adjective; “the darkest colour, reflecting no light, obscure, dark, dismal, sullen, horrible, dusky, foul, dirty, malignant, dark haired.” Above that negative pronouncement of written language a naked, cloaked prophet has come in from the wilderness, holding a bible-like tome with opened pages blankly illuminated by the torch he’s holding. His mouth is agape, hair dishevelled and face marked with dirt, nervously looking above to the stone frame or proscenium arch of the composition which is visibly crumbling. Likewise the ground beneath his feet is cracking and strewn with stones. The shadow under his foot places him on a ledge, with the viewer occupying his negative space, a theatrical pronouncement of fear and nothingness in the act of beholding (without Faith) the comedic play of life. It’s an image which is immediately humorous but also devotional in its search for meaning through Art. As clever as it is heartfelt, crafted with deliberation and instinct, it’s a painting that repays the participant viewer every time we return to the painted scene. The restrained palette is Spartan browns, sienna and umber with a deepening blue background onto which we can construct and project our own narratives, which is exactly the beauty of Macdonald’s Art.

The Tower of Dreams (Oil on board) by Alan Macdonald.

Whilst Hungry Hearts dominates this suite of paintings in size, The Tower of Dreams (Oil on board 30’x24’) with its central Female protagonist trumps it completely. This aspect of the psyche is tremendously strong in Macdonald’s Art and surfaces with the presence of women who command attention entirely on their own terms. Clothed in a blue, hooped dress with her hair piled high like a Goddess, head tilted and one eyebrow raised to question the viewer, she is resoundingly positioned centre stage. The song lyrics “close your eyes and drift away” are hung in an oval pendant around her neck, whilst above her, poised between “North” and “South” is the perfect symmetry of a banner; “This is the day that your life will change. This is the day when everything will fall into place.” Attended by figures in miniature she has the mysterious presence of an oracle. The plucked nib of leaves in her hand feels like they are about to be dropped in an act of divination onto the cracked stone stage, damaged by a cannonball lodged in its surface. The background treatment of deserted, villas, Roman colonnades and countryside, receding into blue water, sky and distant shores, creates a dreamlike dimension with Renaissance players enacting scenes of trial and torturous revelry around the central figure. The background Feminine self stands on one hand, balanced above a canal. A bottle cap becomes a stage where a masked male figure on horseback impales another version of the heroine in a joust. This circular stage form is mirrored in an erupting vertical fountain of underground water, upon which the female figure stands behind a seated, male figure in a monk-like robe, tightening the rope that binds him. Just above the hem of the central figure’s skirt a door is opened like a drawbridge, revealing a fiery, purgatorial scene with skeletal Death and Bacchanalian fauns attending another splinter self or feminine doppelganger, loosely clothed and about to be cloaked in yellow. Right at the edge of the painting in the extreme foreground is an enigmatic man in historical costume observing beneath half closed eyelids a space just beyond the picture frame, with his white Venetian styled mask resting beside him. Every element of the composition triggers potential narratives in an endlessly engaging visual game of conceal and reveal. The complex arrangement of figures in tableaux is expectantly still, waiting for the viewer to interpret and project their own dreams, visions and fantasies into the painting. The figurative tower is feminine, unconscious, multifaceted and more powerful for being so.

This is a diverse show, cleverly annexed so that bodies of individual work can be fully appreciated. Allow yourself time to take it all in.

All images courtesy of Kilmorack Gallery.

www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk

Scottish artists inspired by the sea

Posted on September 28, 2016 by Georgina Coburn

Joyce W Cairns “Farewell To Footdee” (Oil on panel 122cm x 183cm)

The Sea- Scottish artists inspired by the sea

17 September – 29 October, Kilmorack Gallery, by Beauly.

Kilmorack Gallery’s latest exhibition features work by some of Scotland’s finest artists inspired by the convergence of land, sea and memory. Forces of Nature and mind are powerfully brought together in an exciting show including work by; Joyce W Cairns , Steve Dilworth, Kate Downie, Lotte Glob, Marian Leven, Will Maclean, Allan MacDonald, James Newton Adams, Mary Bourne, Ruth Brownlee, Helen Denerley, , Gail Harvey, Janette Kerr, Sian MacQueen, Lynn McGregor, Illona Morrice and Beth Robertson-Fiddes.

On entering the gallery Lotte Glob’s large ceramic tile seascapes; Seascape, Seascape – Tidal and Seascape Stormy Sea, unleash an incredible intensity of colour in a molten fusion of elemental forces and raw materials. Brilliant ultramarine and turquoise create a feeling of depth that the viewer cannot help but dive into. In Seascape-Stormy Sea, water, earth, air and fire meet, unite and divide; cracking and separating like a microcosm of the earth’s geological record. There’s a sense of mindful physicality in this artist’s work based on being in the landscape in the most expansive sense possible. This is combined with a lifetime’s understanding of Craft, unsurpassed in her chosen discipline. Along the coastline of the UNESCO Northern Highlands Geopark that the artist calls home, the ancient Lewisian Gneiss rock, 3,000 million years old, meets the full force of the Atlantic Ocean. Shore, land and mountain are a rich source of found materials, transformed by fire in Glob’s masterful ceramics. The strength, beauty and delicacy in her work is visibly distilled in Flower of the Sea; a living being of fired clay; anemone-like fingers extended around blooms of glassy blue/ green rock pools, tempered with the hue of a subsiding tide of red kelp. In Rock Flower, an outcrop of white clay blooms emerge from what feels like a monumental cliff face, a fused piece of immovable white stone balanced on top of the sculpted clay in counterpoint with the pale, mortal transience of flowers. The handling of materials and form is supremely sensitive and a celebration of an artist at the top of her profession. Reef is another superb example, a rocky outcrop emerging from a disc of ocean which feels like the entire globe; minerals and pigments ebb and flow to the edges of the ceramic, into the deepest sea of mind, time and space imaginable. Another signature piece is Secret Pool; a sphere resembling a meteorite flung from space, which when opened reveals an interior teaming life forms, shoreline colour and vivid joy. Lotte Glob’s responses to her environment are pure and instinctual; her spirit is as adventurous as the experimentation in her Art and in walking the landscape she has come to understand Nature and human connectivity with the environment in ways that never fail to inspire. She’s an artist who always makes me smile for the wisdom, vitality and sheer energy of her practice, intimately connected to the Northwest land, sky and sea from which she is inseparable.

Lotte Glob ” Flower of the Sea” (Ceramic)

One of the most moving works in the exhibition is Farewell to Footdee (Oil on panel 122cm x 183cm) by Scotland’s most significant figurative artist, Joyce. W. Cairns. In many ways the painting is an act of commemoration and remembrance, a strikingly poignant composition of memories which make a life. In frozen white, blue greyness, articulated by the pure warmth of cadmium /vermillion a masterful sense of composition emerges, in the structural diagonal and vertical uprights of the washing line, refracted light on the icy ground and the emotive placement of the human figure. As with all of Cairns’ work we are pushed psychologically to the edge of the frame and beyond it; by design, the distilled palette, the interior positioning of the figures and by the artist’s innate sensitivity. The acute subtlety of winter light upon the rooftops and gently nuanced expression on the face of the foreground female protagonist portrays a moment of vulnerability and sadness at the end of an era. The painting also acknowledges profound loss; of those who have passed, phases of life and aspects of self. Around the foreground protagonist’s neck is a medal of honour, engraved; “Footdee 1979-2014”, marking the artist’s departure for Tayside and a new chapter in the battle of a creative life. I always try to refrain from purely autobiographical readings of this artist’s paintings, because my sense of her work is that like all Great Artists she always transcends herself. It is true that most of Cairns’ female figures physically resemble the artist and that many of her paintings respond to life in the old fishing village of Footdee and the port of Aberdeen, past memories and familial experiences, but equally her field of reference is more widely European in painterly terms and in subject matter. In her extraordinary body of work; War Tourist, Cairns certainly begins the journey re-tracing her Father’s steps through WWII Europe, but the visual statement that emerged out of this research over the following decade crosses all borders into contemporary conflict, the nature of war and the eternal human condition. There are few artists that share her command of large scale figurative composition, save German Expressionists like Beckmann and Grosz. It’s the emotional gravitas and conscience in her work that is immediately and monumentally striking. Look closer and the balance of elements in her compositions are breath taking; a perfect synthesis of instinct, control, ideas and technique. Cairns’ familial memories are ever clothed in wartime dress, like the younger sister in red beret, gloves and shoes, who looks on in the mid-ground as the foreground Self departs the scene. However Farewell to Footdee is more than an image of individual/ autobiographical commemoration, remembrance or grief. The head and shoulders of the central female protagonist connects powerfully with the viewer’s space and the sense of loss we all feel when we leave part of ourselves behind in the places we have lived and in the people we have loved. Her tilted hat, crowned with a white boarded cottage whose chimney almost transforms it into a house of worship, carries emotional weight; like the posture of the tiny female figure leaned within the doorway, head downcast and hands in pockets. Time collapses into the line of cottages that frame an inner courtyard of the soul; the yellow warmth of light from open doorways in the background illuminating scenes of romance, isolation and loneliness re-enacted in the farewell. It is impossible to see this painting and not be affected by its raw, profound emotional stillness or by the artist’s consummate skill.

Joyce W Cairns “Messerschmitt Over Footdee” (Oil on ply, 152cm x 122cm)

In Messerschmitt Over Footdee (Oil on ply, 152cm x 122cm) Cairns assumes the role of an ARP (Air- raid Precaution) warden. Pushed into the foreground she is flanked by WWII ephemera; Lucky Strike cigarettes, anti-gas ointment and a gas attack leaflet arrangement of museum pieces. The phosphorescent glow of the sea merges with the sky in the heightened perspective of the composition. The illuminating presence and bisecting geometry of searchlights, lighthouses, washing lines and the boundaries of the safe harbour are invaded by an enemy bomber. Again the central protagonist is positioned in the foreground, standing in the viewer’s space as witness, clutching a wreath of poppies to her chest. Out of a first floor window a woman waves a union jack, whilst below a naked female figure emerges from an illuminated doorway. The idea of “keeping the home fires burning” and the anxiety of war on the domestic front can be seen in the pallor of her expression, articulated by the memories , stories and artefacts gathered by the artist, assimilated within her psyche as part of the War Tourist retrospective body of work.

Steve Dilworth “Throwing Object” (Burr elm, wren and bronze)

A series of hand held objects by Isle of Harris based artist Steve Dilworth provide a very tactile experience of forms, materials and energy drawn directly from land and seascape. Throwing Object (Burr elm, wren and bronze) transforms the viewer into a participant in its natural beauty and crafted allure. The organic form of honey coloured elm feels like it has been freed by the hand of the artist and the touch of the visitor, with the worn glow of patina we might see in an ancient church pew, smoothed by generation after generation. With carved hollows for the fingers it is designed to be held and has a visceral, irresistible, gravitational pull. Once held it feels comforting as the object’s centre of gravity aligns with your own, like a divining rod for the soul. This piece containing a small bird and held together by bronze fits comfortably in two hands as an object of contemplation or in the violent trajectory of one, it becomes a superbly balanced to “psychic weapon” of protection. The aged wood, once living bird and a metal, comprised mostly of conductive copper, create a unique flight path of intentionality and energy. The form feels organic but also like a human artefact and its gravitas can be felt in the ambiguity of its potential use. It is weighted in the interchange of crafting its two halves; for defensive action on the one hand, or meditative thought on the other; tendencies for creation or destruction which are both equally generated in moments of connection between Mother Nature and our own nature(s) as human beings. All of these associations flow from the intimacy, duality and ambiguity of an object which is not sculptural or a visual art in the traditional sense, but connecting with something deep, subconscious and essentially primal through the universal language of touch and collective memory.

Steve Dilworth “Deep Water” Water (Harris Stone, seabed water and whale bone, 10cm high x 17cm x 12.5cm )

This timeless quality can also be found in Deep Water (Harris Stone, seabed water and whale bone, 10cm high x 17cm x 12.5cm ) a drogue form of high contrast dark and light , grounded in the weight of solid stone and the depth of the emotionally conductive element held within it. Its hollows are curiously orbital and the delicate ridged line on top echoes a natural curve ending at the base of a skull, or the sleek skinned form of a sea mammal. The combination of water from the seabed off Rona, whale bone and Harris stone is inspired, with flecks of metallic starlight made visible by shaping and polishing. Seal Oil Stone (Harris stone, beach stone, copper, seal oil, 11cm high x 20cm x 18cm) also illuminates the value held within in the vial of seal oil which glints like precious gold, encased in the hollowed interior of a large beach pebble, eroded by waves, and coils of conductive copper. The speckled surface of the stone, green oxidisation of the copper and glimpse of the object’s interior through a birth canal-like opening gives this work the feeling of a newly discovered ancient fertility object, borne of the sea. The instinctive combination and alignment of materials which has its own dynamic flow in the artist’s studio, translates directly to the viewer through the nervous system. The form of the object is rich with associative triggers for the imagination and in this way, as with all of this artist’s work, the visitor/ participant completes the object.

The pure energy of liquiform water and solid stone is distilled in Wave ( Harris Stone, 18cm high x 20cm x 9cm) an incredibly compact curvature that seems to encompass the lunar origins of tides and the dynamism of a concentrated form turning in on itself. The natural qualities of Harris stone become flecks of salt spray in shifting seams of green, while the precarious power of a crashing wave is folded into stone. The material is transformed by the idea, energy and presence of Nature. The thinned spine of the object and its asymmetrical base playfully pivot the deceptively simple core form in a singular moment of recognition, preserved for all time. On closer inspection the convergence of convex and concave facets reveal themselves as the light and the viewer’s position changes. The edges are shaped with characteristic precision, sharpened to the touch and the sense of dynamic movement is extremely powerful, vastly exceeding the physical dimensions of the object.

Will Maclean Voyage of the James Caird- Elephant Island (Painted wood and resin, 82 x 72 cm).

The expansive mindscape of the ocean is the subject of Will Maclean’s Winter North Atlantic (Painted wood and resin, 124cm x 105cm x 5cm) and a fine example of his work. (Reviewed previously as part of the Fiaradh gu’n Iar: Veering Westerly exhibition, IMAG, georginacoburnarts Blogpost 09/03/16.) Maclean’s exploration below the surface is realised with great subtlety in the abstract box composition Voyage of the James Caird- Elephant Island (Painted wood and resin, 82 x 72 cm). Here the layered surface evokes the monumentality of a frozen wilderness, inscribed with human/ drawn marks of circular navigation and weighted plumb lines. To the right a small rectangular cutaway reveals a line of swell and landscaped horizon conveying an emotional sense of movement within the expanse of the extreme Southern Ocean. The ice flow palette, which moves and melts before the eyes, encompasses a God’s-eye view and an interior window perspective penetrating the surface of the painting/ box construction. It is a perfectly balanced abstract of painted, drawn and constructed elements referencing history and the spirit of human exploration. The journey made by Shackleton and his companions in the small boat the “James Caird” from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the Southern Ocean was a feat of courage and persistence. Maclean’s rendering conveys a state of mind and human vulnerability in relation to the environment, in the face of Nature at her most unforgiving. He achieves this in the drawn/ incised marks of a human hand and in the use of found materials, recovered debris from generational tides of human experience. In the presence of such a work we are brought face to face with the human scale of all our endeavours.

Kate Downie “The America Ship” (acrylic and ink on canvas, 167cm x 160cm)

Kate Downie’s The America Ship (acrylic and ink on canvas, 167cm x 160cm) is a wonderful exploration of human and natural elements framed by the skewed perspective of a small boat enduring a swell. In an interior lounge space two figures sit apart from each other, staring out into an absorbing grey sea of their own thoughts. On the coffee table between them; a precariously poised model of a ship balances upon an elongated shadow of deepest blue. The coastline spills into the room and Downie’s ink drawn marks are fast, bold and gestural, rendering the figures with dynamic stillness. The ochre ground of the floor anchors the ebb and flow of life and relationships, while the ship’s wheel above spins like a hand of fate between the two figures. It is an image of human connection emotionally on board a model ship with the exterior environment brought into the domestic space to unexpectedly rich expressive effect. Part of what convinces in this work is Downie’s direct drawn response, characteristically invested in her subject.

James Newton Adams A Pocket Full of Fish (Acrylic on canvas, 97 x 97 cm)

James Newton Adams has contributed a series of strong compositions to the exhibition including As I was Going to St Ives (Acrylic on canvas, 86 x 96 cm) and In the Company of Birds, (Acrylic on canvas, 87 x 87 cm), injected with Newton Adams’ characteristically whimsical streak and naïve style, tempering what is a harsh human existence carved out between land and sea. One of the most interesting and affecting works in that respect is A Pocket Full of Fish (Acrylic on canvas, 97 x 97 cm) Newton Adams doesn’t often depict the female figure but here his expressionistic rendering of a pregnant woman with a baby standing beside the absence of her partner, his orange fishing overalls suspended from the clothes line, is an insightful and socially charged image of inevitability and unrealised hopes. The pocketful of fish in her partner’s overalls feels like a consolation prize, rather like the bundled child tucked nondescriptly in her arm like a lifeless, sleeping doll. The mother’s bleak expression, mouth pinched shut like the red peg in her hand and with a hint of shadowed bruising around her eye, expands the in the pervasive mood of the composition. In the background a male figure plods, head bowed, along a depressively level horizon of road. Characteristic use of strong primaries; red, blue, yellow , together with the monochrome weight of white and black which delineates figurative scenes of coastal village and domestic life, give Newton Adams’ paintings a certain edginess and emotional height uniquely his own.

Mary Bourne “Cloud Mass Over the Sea” (Ink wash on paper)

Edginess and emotional height is realised in a very different way in Peter Davis’s Edge of the Storm (Watercolour and pigment on paper, 50 x 70cm) in the tonality of forces; dark and light, pitted against each other in the still calm before the storm. This is beautifully realised in the bisected composition and expert handling of a fluid and notoriously unforgiving medium. What is captured very potently is the threat of the storm, the tension in the moment before the onslaught; that very particular angry blue/grey temper of Scottish skies which is part of the internalised character of Northern land and seascape. The way the pigment is suspended, preserved in its once liquefied medium, also conveys the anticipatory moment, that heaviness, which contrasts beautifully with a shining horizon line of light over the sea. A zen like economy of expression also infuses the ink wash of Mary Bourne’s Cloud Mass over the Sea, a wonderful dance between form, fluidity and reflection. In Red Cloud over Sea (Ink wash on paper) Bourne combines strong marks bled into the edges in a marriage of accidental and controlled marks, capturing one of Nature’s meditative moments. Her low relief sandstone and palladium leaf sculptures; Beach I, II, III (each 30 x 30 cm )present not just an effective abstracted play of light on the sand in three dimensions, but the understated simplicity, of leaving the door ajar for the viewer’s own imaginative experience of the shoreline; triggering memories of walking on sand among glinting pools and the dancing light of the sun.

Allan MacDonald “Great North Headland” (Oil on canvas, 40 x 152 cm)

A master of light and landscape painting in the Northern Romantic tradition, Allan MacDonald’s Great North Headland (Oil on canvas, 40 x 152 cm) is a triptych which celebrates divinity in nature, conjoined with a human heart and mind beholding it. The massed energy of turbulent seas are realised in an invigorating palette of ochre, orange, red, green, umber and white- the physicality of cold salt spray and the heat of sublime spirit animating it, seen as underpainting or ground emerging through the layered impasto. A progressively more abstract immersion Form and Void- Beauly Firth (Oil on board) is bolder and confidently intuitive, with large flat foreground brush marks, white ground shining through and a blaze of resiliently hopeful blue. The paint handling reveals the artist’s direct response to the enormity of Nature; land, sea and sky, which comes from working outside in all weathers. In Malestrom Eshness (Oil on board) a fury of waves crashes against the coastal cliffs- raw power, green, white, umber and furious grey, like the livid eye of stillness at the centre of a raging storm. These works aren’t seascape scenes, but richly interpretative paintings, demonstrating a commitment to craft and belief with the artist’s brush marks testimony to that all-encompassing devotional energy. They are also very physical responses to an endlessly challenging environment. The artist doesn’t distance himself from the life force of nature all around him but actively goes out to meet it with all his perceptive faculties, not just what can be seen with his eyes. In consequence the viewer feels as if they too are standing on the edge of the cliff; in the grip of an essential dynamic between humankind, Nature and the eternal mystery of the sea.

All images by kind permission of Kilmorack Gallery.

http://www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk

Northern Light

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Georgina Coburn

Rock of Ages- Allan MacDonald.

Northern Light: Recent Paintings by Peter Davis.

The Unbearable Brightness of Being– James Newton Adams.

12 August to 12 September. Kilmorack Gallery, By Beauly.

Rock of Ages by Allan MacDonald (Oil on canvas).

Three strong, individual statements emerge in Kilmorack Gallery’s latest exhibition, engaging with the Divine in Nature and human nature in a distinctively Northern climate.

Allan MacDonald’s breath taking seascapes reveal why he is regarded as one of the UK’s most respected and accomplished landscape artists. The beauty of MacDonald’s Art lies in its sheer physicality and meditative insight. His is an Art of going out to face the elements in all weathers, in driven pursuit of moments of understanding and connection. This essential honesty is directly translated into the artist’s handling of paint and transcendental palette. Light in every sense of the word permeates even his darkest and most turbulent paintings. There is always an eternal flash of optimistic blue and warm, resilient tones of underpainting emerging beneath immovable mountains or the steely gravitas of Northern Scottish skies. I’ve been following and writing about this artist’s work for over a decade now and his paintings never fail to astonish and inspire me. MacDonald’s unfaltering sense of the sublime in Nature and our human capacity for renewal through the creative Divine are at the heart of his work.

In Moonrise Strathy (Oil on board) large bold strokes and density from impasto, seeing clear to the ground fills the image with a palpable sense of energy and vigour. The half-moon and raging tide anchor the composition to natural cycles, confidently bordering on abstraction. In Northern Outpost (Oil on board) a glow of golden light breaks above the headland, shimmering over the water and into the viewer’s foreground. Loaded and incised marks down to the board convey the lashing sea in rich, vibrant green and blue, balanced with the warmth of lemon, ochre and cadmium yellow. In this ever changing furore, light is a constant source of illumination and a dominant presence; within the painting, the soul of the artist and the eye/mind of the spectator. In Rock of Ages (Oil on canvas) clefts of shadow delivered in bold, singular strokes and the dramatic sweep of light across the monumental rock face create a feeling of earth bound resilience and transformative wonder. Here lies the true lineage of Northern Romanticism, based on pure experience and communion with Nature, where human scale assumes, in cosmic proportion, its rightful humility.

The Ravages of Time by Allan MacDonald (Oil on Canvas).

Crescendo by Allan MacDonald (Oil on board).

Appropriately hung on the far end wall of Kilmorack Gallery, in the space where the church altar would have been, are a trinity of large scale paintings, each one inspirational in its own aspect. To the right, The Ravages of Time (Oil on canvas), depicting sea cliffs shrouded in ocean spray and turbulent mist, conveying a sense of vulnerability in the fluid tracery of marks cascading over rocks into the ancient depth of the sea. Standing on the shore of a harsh environment, the promise of emerging light prevails. The central painting Crescendo (Oil on board) is a moment of light and hope breaking through the commanding gloom of storm clouds, over the relative calm of the sea. A deep emerald horizon of green and rolling blue anchors the painting in contemplative stillness, while MacDonald’s instinctive and illuminating brush work bring forth a resounding sense of human aspiration. The final painting, The Coming Brightness (Oil on canvas) is a telling surface of built up paint layers, labour which yields a wide semi-circular swathe of light cutting through the sky, reflected in the sea and striking the shore. Thin drips of yellow light and pure white pigment are contrasted by the deep purple and mauve shadow of the sky. It is a moment of realisation borne out of labour, of grappling with paint and the elusive nature of painting itself. In Voice of Many Waters (Oil on canvas) we see an essential trinity of structure, expression and spirit rendered equal.

The Coming Brightness by Allan MacDonald (Oil on Canvas).

Shetland based artist Peter Davis’s watercolours on paper deliver another beautifully distilled vision of a human eye and mind perceiving the landscape. In Storm Beach we see a meeting of elements; washes of suspended pigment, merging and overlapping, betwixt and between sky, land and sea, seeping to the edges of the composition. Davis’s masterful tempering of the paper and fluid technique create gathering strengths of water and pigment, like the troughs and ridges of a storm. The artist communicates a profound understanding of his environment and his chosen medium in landscapes that hold the imagination in deepening gradations of colour and heightened awareness. Lambi Loch (Watercolour on Paper) is a beautiful example, the landscape reduced to a Zen-like bowl of intensifying blue. In Loch at Westerwick the pure white paper of the foreground, anchored by a dark solid stone at the edge of the water grounds the viewer, while reflective light both sides of the horizon create a burgeoning sense of the infinite. These are quietly adept and exemplary works by an artist breathing new life into the medium of watercolour.

Storm Beach by Peter Davis (Watercolour on paper).

The artist’s experimental approach is refined in Last Day, where the handling of pigment, leeched into stone or the convergence of tidal washes display masterful control. The lone rock is almost figurative and emotive in its associations; it’s a landscape of loneliness that extends into the distance and the high set, weighted horizon. Davis’s work speaks of being still and resoundingly present, both for the artist in terms of creative process and the viewer in seeing/contemplating his work. Davis’s palette is naturally subtle and finely nuanced, allowing space for each physical element within the picture plane; white paper, water and pigment to be mindfully observed, creating a space for the intellect and the imagination to dive into.

Lambi Loch by Peter Davis (Watercolour on paper).

Last Day by Peter Davis (Watercolour on paper).

The acrylic on canvas paintings and mild steel sculptures of James Newton Adams are naively drawn, often humorous and insightful observations of humanity. The artist’s use of stark black and white with expressionistic accents of colour captures everyday life with refreshing economy and joie de vivre. Safety in Numbers exhibits a characteristic bird’s eye view, with the title referring equally to the school of fish or the human dwellings compressed into two coastal headlands, boats and buoys bobbing on the water like toys. Human figures in paintings such as The School Run, Market Day and Am Prabam are deceptively simple; however the posture of gestural marks conveys the attitude and the emotional state of each individual in the crowd, suggesting the nature of their interactions and relationships with others. The sense of close observation within small rural communities, dependent on the land and sea, is heightened in Adams’ painting The Fisherman’s Breakfast with its angular collection of figures; world weary, neurotic, hardened and inherently comic.

Safety in Numbers by James Newton Adams (Acrylic on canvas).

The Fisherman’s Breakfast by James Newton Adams (Acrylic on canvas).

You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks defies the saying in the uncharacteristically open space the lone figure inhabits. You can’t help but smile as a grown bearded man flies a red kite whilst a small dog looks quizzically on from the edge of the composition! In spite of works like Fisher Boy which skate dangerously close to John Bellany’s raw and sombre vision of village life, Adams holds to his own vision- one which is infused with essential humour in the face of life’s harsher truths. There are also moments of the pure whimsy; in The Butter Dish with a dog eyeing the prize on the kitchen table whilst his elderly owner obliviously washes her dishes, or in the vibrancy and gentility of Open Garden. Adams’ elongated figurative sculptures such as Barrow Boy or Better Together are also infused with precariously poised humour and knowing, in the balance of form and in the relationship between a man and woman holding hands, one following behind the other.

Barrow Boy by James Newton Adams (Mild Steel).

Each artist is well represented and it is a pleasure to move between them in the exhibition space, giving rise to intense contemplation, avid thought and humorous delight.

All images by kind permission of Kilmorack Gallery.

www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk

Sam Cartman, Steve Dilworth and Patricia Cain

Posted on May 10, 2015 by Georgina Coburn

Kilmorack Gallery, 8 May – 13 June

Steve Dilworth, Moon Sight- Stone (Dunite, 60 x 30 x 20cm)

Kilmorack’s latest exhibition combines visions of Nature, Humanity and Industry with paintings by Sam Cartman, pastels and mixed media works by Patricia Cain and a striking collection of sculptural objects by internationally renowned artist Steve Dilworth.

Stylistically this latest body of work marks a high point for Sam Cartman, whose distinctive landscapes capture the mark of agriculture and industry on the land, coupled with the emotional weight of expansive, brooding Scottish skies. In the context of contemporary landscape painting in Britain, it is refreshing to see Cartman’s industrial palette and architecturally structured compositions, coupled with the immediate response of drawn and incised marks in pencil, charcoal and oils. Although from a distance the formal arrangement of form, colour, and line dominate, immediately drawing the eye into the composition, up close there is subtlety and variety in the artist’s handling of paint that is a real pleasure to behold.

Sam Cartman, Tynron Treelines (Oil, 58 x 61cm)

The bold deliberation and planar treatment of fields or sky are beautifully tempered by the textural qualities of thick impasto, using palette knife and brush, delicate washes and impulsive, spontaneous marks. Cartman’s engagement with the picture plane mirrors places where the imprint of human hands and industrial machinery are integrated into the rolling earth, hills and vegetation. These points of intersection between the structured order of the man-made landscape and natural elements are reflected in the artist’s paint handling.

Sam Cartman, Milnton Byre (Oil, 58 x 81cm)

Tellingly he chooses to paint a quarry on the Isle of Skye as opposed to the customary scene of misty mountains or an endless parade of picturesque coastal cottages. His art of landscape isn’t about the Romanticised or Picturesque but something more real and complex. The inherent design and physicality of paint create a sense of place somewhere between the rural countryside and urbanity. This edginess can be seen in the way that paint is layered, pronounced edges, accents of hot orange or red and in the positioning of human architecture. In Milnton Byre (Oil) an out building is set in an abstracted composition of dense yellow ochre, the stark whiteness containing a depth of ultramarine, drawing the eye to a distant horizon of smeared, circular trees in blue and greens. There is a feeling of focused isolation in this work, laid bare in the more abstract painting Elephant (Oil) in a deeper, cooler and vibrant palette of blues.

Sam Cartman, Skye Quarry (Oil, 91.5 x 122cm)

Cartman’s large scale painting Glenshee (Oil) sees the dynamic elements of his style pushed to their limit in an exciting combination of geometric abstraction and natural line. The sky is a progression of deepening tonality from left to right, intersected by white, rectangular impasto and the composition of blue, green, grey and white fields, with linear accents of orange and arched mountains, lead the eye to dwell convincingly at the centre of the composition. The sense of space and depth in the landscape is powerfully realised in the artist’s design, distinctive marks and distilled palette.

Patricia Cain, Thicket II (Pastel, 170 x 170cm)

Patricia Cain’s mixed media works and pastel drawings provide a visual counterpoint between natural forms and man –made structures. Favouring the diptych, Cain creates spaces for contemplation in bisected images of growth; both in the natural world Thicket II (Pastel) and the built environment Arena (Pastel). The division of the image and detailed marks intervenes in how we might ordinarily read (or momentarily scan) images drawn from everyday life. In Arena Cain creates an incredible sense of depth in a myriad of scaffolding, hard metal drawn in the contradictory medium of soft pastel. Out with the tangled branches of Thicket II, she creates negative white space for the viewer’s mind to wander into. There is a sense of mapped chaos in organically charged intersections of branches and foliage; interestingly resembling an aerial, God-like perspective of humanity in a built up urban setting.

Patricia Cain, Arena (Pastel, 186 x 250cm)

In Living as a Process (Pastel) Cain alludes to a human trajectory in young green leaves amongst a tangle of growth, set against swathes of white space, pregnant with creative possibilities. Whilst the scale of ambition in Cain’s large scale drawings is undeniable, her abstract collaged mixed media works, reminiscent of an aged Matisse, are less convincing. The bold abstraction of Forest (Watercolour and Pastel) displays a more interesting interplay of visual elements; colour, line and form, in a concentrated ground of red hot vermillion. Emotional and spatial depth is created with the utmost economy; with dual vertical lines in white and black receding into the distance, whilst the upright solidity of the tree in the foreground, partially shaded in pastel and with a single curve, brings the suggestion of growth in cool shades of green and blue.

Patricia Cain, Living as a Process (Pastel, 111 x 150cm)

On entering the gallery the gravitational pull of Steve Dilworth’s sculptural objects cuts a swathe through the space. The presentation of this three dimensional work on a series of waist height plinths allows the viewer to get up close from multiple angles and experience the intimately tactile qualities of each work, with directional lighting enhancing the angular precision of their sublime craftsmanship.

Moon Sight-Stone (Dunite) combines Deco-like elegance of line with the grounded integrity of stone, millions of years old. Drawn from the landscape of Harris, the seamless combination of fluid planes and orbital form suggests shifting light and perception, the phases of the moon, the passage of time and of the seasons over millennia. It is the entire cosmos in a single piece of earth; the living, breathing presence of Nature whose beauty lies in being both deadly and Divine. The complex hollows of the orbital cavity shift and change between positive and negative space, darkness and light, waxing and waning before the viewer’s eyes and summoning something deep within. Moon Sight-Stone speaks to the viewer on a primal level. The hollow orb could be an eye or a grasping claw, the flawlessly smooth and dynamically sharp edges of hewn stone polished to perfection with natural accents glinting like stars. Linked to the legend of Seer Stones it is an object of ancient tradition, Art which has its origins in ritual and the stories we tell to make sense of the world and of ourselves.

Like many of Dilworth’s sculptural forms it is monumentally intimate and naturally ambiguous. Moon Sight-Stone could be an object of communication and sight over vast distances, a shapeshifting bird, or an entire landscape of human consciousness. What is invested in its making translates directly to the imagination of the viewer, connecting us to the impulses and contradictions that make us human. It is intensely physical and deeply cerebral in its acknowledgement of a way of seeing and being on the earth, linked to tribal or indigenous cultures. It is carved intuitively and engineered with perseverance, the weight of stone beautifully poised and balanced, cool to the touch, lithely evasive in movement to awaken the senses. This is not a sculptural object to be passively looked at and admired, to commemorate history or glorify its maker, but to be experienced and held within, an initiation into collective human memory and to aspects of self we may well have forgotten in the blurring attention deficit of everyday life. Dilworth’s objects have extraordinary clarity of form and intention, they’re not trying to be anything; they are real rather than representational and absolutely grounded in life, death and the human condition.

Steve Dilworth, Swift (Dunite and Swift, 23 x 9 x13cm)

Many of Dilworth’s objects contain once living material as transitional points in awakening consciousness. Life and death are eternal dance partners and in an intimate, hand held work like Swift (Dunite and Swift) this centre of spiritual gravity can be sensed and felt in the body. Hollows for the fingers on the underside of the object naturally fit the hands with the thumbs resting in mask-like eye sockets. The apex points towards the body with the weight of stone perfectly balanced , like an object for divining with inward directionality. The robust, masculine form feels like a recently discovered artefact from a long lost tribe, its centre of gravity resting in the collective unconscious. Plumbing the depths of the soul for recognition, this work suggests an innate connection with the timeless human need for Creativity and imagination as a source of renewal.

Steve Dilworth, Throwing Object (Lignum Vitae, Leather and Bird, 13cm diameter)

Another hand held work Throwing Object (Lignum Vitae, Leather and Bird) is crafted to naturally fit into the palms, the smooth wood and smell of bound, interlaced leather brilliantly melded together. Inside is an archetypal mystery, hidden from view and aligned with the spirit. Rattle (Burr Elm, fishing line and stone pebbles) is reminiscent of Neolithic fertility objects and ritual, with slices of elm creating an open rattle, like the deep crevice of a rock or the female body. As if miraculously confronting a wooden object that has survived over thousands of years, Dilworth’s Rattle is playfully and powerfully aligned with the fertile human imagination, the idea of rebirth and the art object as a bridge between the physical and the metaphysical.

Steve Dilworth, Water Skull Macquette (Mixed Media for Casting, 40 x 37 x 54cm)

Many of Dilworth’s sculptural forms feel as though they are in the process of transformation or becoming. The artist’s Water Skull Macquette (Mixed Media for Casting) is crafted from the inside out, with two halves fitting beautifully together in endlessly fluid, evolutionary form. Every surface, even those we cannot see are given equal care and consideration. It is a fascinating hybrid of outer carapace in the overlapping shell-like interior and inner skeleton in a hinged, oblong outer skull. Part insect, part crustacean and part marine mammal, it is born of natural elements and could be a fragment from an ancient past or a projection of the future once global warming has transformed the planet, returning it to a primordial, aquatic swamp. The aquiline curves invoke the elemental movement of water, whilst the solidity of the skull creates the impression of an organism built for endurance. As the model for a larger scale work, it would be wonderful to see Water Skull Macquette cast in bronze on a truly monumental scale and exhibited permanently in a public location.

Steve Dilworth Beaked Bird (Bronze Ed 3 of 5, 20 x 50 x 40cm)

Two versions of Beaked Bird (Bronze Ed 3 of 5), the first in a dark bronze patina and the second finished to a golden patina, reminiscent of organic materials such as aged stone, bone or ivory, is also a transformational and highly ambiguous object. Aside from the associations of its title, the elongated beak sits seamlessly in the hollows of a rounded elliptical form; suggesting the germination of a seed, the embryo of an as yet undiscovered species or a hermaphroditic organism. The combination of masculine and feminine forms is also an intriguing feature of Venus Stone (Dunite). Poised on its side like a reclining nude, Dilworth’s tooth form with sharpened roots links to earlier forms by the artist in alabaster and granite; inspired by hawking lures and ancient fertility statues such as the Venus of Willendorf. The supremely smooth dominant curves of this Venus Stone are essentially feminine; a crescent curve feels aligned to the transformational power of lunar phases and ancient mythology. The object is innately sensual to the touch, like a caress from hip to thigh but with a predatory angularity. Run your finger along the pointed root of the tooth and there is a sonic effect, like an invocation of our most basic instincts whether hunting or hunted. The duality of nature and of human nature, both masculine and feminine, is brought to bear in this work. It is powerful and subtle; in its soft sheen, sharpened lines and deceptive simplicity, a supremely honed object of complex human behaviour and psychology; sexual, sensual and invested in survival.

Steve Dilworth, Venus Stone (Dunite, 50 x 25 x 23cm)

There are many works in this exhibition to be savoured, enjoyed and revisited. The exquisite crafting of Dilworth’s sculptural objects, both in thought and execution, together with their presentation in the gallery space, naturally invite the viewer to make their own tactile and imaginative connections. The way that the thematic content of Cartman’s paintings and Cain’s pastels inform each other and the rich layers of association in the materials and crafting of Dilworth’s three dimensional objects make this an exceptional exhibition not to be missed.

All images by kind permission of Kilmorack Gallery.

www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk

Kilmorack Winter Exhibition

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Georgina Coburn

29 November 2014 – March 2015

Kilmorack Gallery, By Beauly

James Newton Adams,Summit Fever

Kilmorack’s Winter Exhibition features some exciting work by established artists and those new to the gallery including; James Newton Adams, Paul Bloomer, Patricia Cain,Sam Cartman, Kirstie Cohen, Peter Davis, Helen Denerley, Henry Fraser, Leonie Gibbs, Gail Harvey, Liz Knox, Allan MacDonald, Charles MacQueen, Illona Morrice, Robert Powell and Peter White.

It’s always a pleasure to see work by Shetland based artist Paul Bloomer, particularly his larger scale paintings and woodcuts. View From My Reawick Studio (Woodcut, 65 x 77cm, 1 of 20) with its heightened Expressionistic perspective leads the eye into the composition along a curve of wire to a progression of electricity poles and a tiny cottage in the distance. A squall of marks in which sky, sea and wind are bound together in an undeniable upsurge of energy inform human scale in the image. The angular bisection of the composition creates a psychological edge in stark black and white, with the human dwelling perched precariously on a downward slope of ground. Two curlews drift above the turbulence in ascension, while another sits stationary on the pole in the foreground; at home in their environment, pitched against the gouged physicality of sky.

Paul Bloomer,View From My Reawick Studio

Bloomer’s large scale woodcuts are the perfect combination of immediacy and deliberation; the spontaneity and intensity of the drawn mark in brilliant counterpoint with highly skilled formal design. Drawing and painting out of doors in all weathers, at the mercy of nature in the UK’s most Northerly Isles gives Bloomer’s work a unique dynamism and perspective on humanity. Charcoal drawing onto board provides the foundation for his consummate skill as a printmaker. Woodcuts demand an assured hand and mindful, hewn precision in their making, qualities which have always been present in this artist’s work; from the powerful social critiques of his Black Country figurative works to his current focus on the natural world.

Paul Bloomer Gannets at Noss

His depictions of birds, particularly those in flight such as Gannets at Noss (Woodcut, 95 x 64cm, 1 of 20) or resting Yellow Warblers (Woodcut, 1 of 20, 50 x 64cm) are invested with life and light. In the former we see the aerodynamic velocity of gannets plummeting into the ocean, their design in perfect harmony with their natural drive to feed. The spiral like composition of Yellow Warblers exudes luminosity and natural order, the cyclical nature of life and vulnerability in bold silhouette. These are medium sized works compared to the expansive scope of Bloomer’s Art in Oils, Watercolour, Mixed Media and Printmaking; however their distinctive style and execution make them among the most striking works in the exhibition.

Peter Davis Watch House Loch

Another Shetland based artist Peter Davis demonstrates his adeptness with watercolour, creating contemplative images with enviable economy. In Watch House Loch (Watercolour, 47 x 68cm) a basin like field of washes bled into progressive depths of ultramarine create a sense of emotional depth. The stillness of sky, water and reflective cloud in Davis’s lyrical image Smalla Waters at Dusk (Watercolour, 47 x 68cm) is a highlight in a suite of paintings by the artist which extend into abstraction. The most convincing of these are bridges between representation and abstraction, where the artist’s command of the medium is finely balanced in calculated fluidity. The suspension of pigment gives these works delicacy, revealing distinct qualities of light found only in the far Northern landscape.

Allan MacDonald, A Dense Accumulation

Allan MacDonald has contributed some truly celebratory works to the exhibition. A Dense Accumulation (Oil on Board, 50 x 60cm) is a work of beauty with life in every mark. It’s a joyful celebration of nature in full bloom reaching towards an affirmation of blue sky. This quality is also present in Storm Cloud, Wheatfield, Oil on Board 25 x 30cm) where a thick impasto field is aglow and the threat of storm clouds are subtly contrasted with the brightness of blue above. The paint handling is fully invested in the subject, reinterpreting the landscape and our place within it. Sound of Many Waters (Oil on Board, 17 x 61cm) is another beautifully realised marriage of colour, texture and gestural mark; the rough edges of the board complementing the yellow of unfurling waves, deep oceanic greens and steadfast purple headland. Calm water, tide and ocean swell meet in a single evasive moment captured by MacDonald’s intuitive response to his environment and masterly paint handling.

Charles MacQueen’s work celebrates intense associations of colour, form and place. Pool Essaouira ( Mixed Media, 71 x 73cm) is a symphony of blue where overlapping fields of colour create depth in a supremely balanced composition of form and feeling. Heat Marrakech (Mixed Media, 102 x 76cm) is a furnace of orange and red, while Heat (Mixed Media, 70 x 60cm) contrasts the cool interior arch of the doorway with the glow of incandescent cadmium red. We rest in a space between shadow and light in MacQueen’s evocation of place and memory.

Liz Knox, Object Troves

A new addition to the gallery’s established artists is Liz Knox, whose best oil paintings are an intuitive rather than literal interpretation of the Northern Scottish coastline. Although the high octane palette sits on a formulaic edge, her nuanced paint handling is extremely sensitive and demonstrates great promise. Object Troves (Oil on Canvas, 71 x 102cm) is a good example, with the under painting emerging from shifting sands and receding tide. Within this fluid environment we see reliquaries of memory; gathered shells, a shoe and a bucket and spade presented in precious alcoves of sand and remembrance.

Liz Knox, Near Rispond, Sutherland

Near Rispond, Sutherland (Oil on Canvas, 71 x 102cm.) with its expanse of beach, depth of colour and emergent light on the horizon also presents an interpretative space rather than a pictorial scene. The rocks in the foreground feel like a mountainous microcosm of Sutherland, heightened by wedged accents of brilliant red. The curvature of a tide like stain in the lower right hand corner reveals the ebb and flow of the artist’s own rhythm and way of seeing; a distinctive voice which becomes somewhat lost in a work like Helmsdale Masts where the handling and palette are too uniform. What separates and elevates exponents of landscape painting in the UK is the artist’s ability to mindfully inhabit the landscape rather than simply look at it. Whatever the style may be if the artist is invested in such a way then inevitably the audience will feel it.

James Newton Adams, The Milk Round

In Summit Fever James Newton Adams’ Summit Fever (Acrylic on Board, 76 x 76cm) the frozen ground is flattened into a promontory that extends into the icy blue sea beyond. With an economy of mark the artist portrays the human state of activity in each tiny figure, a quality which extends to a rare interior scene Highland Wedding (Acrylic on Card, 76 x 101cm). There is humour and pathos as we enter the austere expanse of a hall populated with tiny figures at a wedding reception, each one expressive of their own inner state. The naïve style is immediate and the perspective emotive. The Milk Round (Acrylic on Card, 76 x 76cm) is another fine example where the winding street of a seaside village dwarfs the lone figure bent double like the warning of an “aged” street sign, carrying home a dead weight of loneliness in a bag of shopping. The isolation of the human being is present in all of these works, but there is also life and humour in the artist’s keen observation. Although reminiscent of Lowry, these latest works are very much branded by Adams’ unique vision of humanity and the psychological territory of Northern Scotland. Until the daffodils begin to appear Kilmorack is a great place to fill the winter months with colour, light and insight.

All images by kind permission of Kilmorack Gallery.

www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk

Eight Sculptors & Their Drawings

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Georgina Coburn

Eight Sculptors and their Drawings

15^th August to 13^th September , Kilmorack Gallery, by Beauly.

It is always exciting to see an exhibition that expands your ideas about what a medium can be. Eight Sculptors and their Drawings featuring work by Mary Bourne, Helen Denerley, Steve Dilworth, Leonie Gibbs, Lotte Glob, Gerald Laing, Will Maclean and George Wylie combines the immediacy of an artist’s first response with the permanence, distillation, monumentality and intimacy of multidimensional sculptural objects. The best works in the show move beyond sculpture/ the Art object and are very much about the living, creative act of making and experiencing work in more than three dimensions.

Lotte Glob’s etching “Walking the Faroese Cliffs” (Above) with its shaded chasms and figurative rock formations jutting into the sky feels like a timeless, primordial landscape. The strength of her drawings is consistent with her approach to ceramic sculpture; a fusion of elements drawn directly from the landscape, forged by water, earth, fire and air. “Walking the Faroese Cliffs” conveys the artist’s essential relationship with the landscape, the living skin of the earth and the knowing of countless generations. A suite of pastel and charcoal drawings; “Rocks Watching You”, “Boulder Land”, “Rocks Never Lie” and “Meeting on a Hillside” are infused with tremendous strength and vibrant energy. It is a joy to see the assured hand and unique vision of the artist resoundingly present in both her drawings and sculptural work. Glob’s fused books, created from raw elements from the land and ceramic are sealed shut from the eye but ever expansive in the imagination. “Book of the Bog People” is a particularly fine example which feels as though it has been excavated from the earth, encased in sediment millennia deep,tapping into a seam of collective memory. “Geologist’s Diary” evokes an entire landscape is its molten form of fused stones, mountains and lochs. Glob’s work powerfully communicates the multidimensional experience of being in the landscape; physically, spiritually, intellectually and emotionally, rather than merely seeing, owning or inhabiting it. Her work is a potent reminder of the power of natural forces and of human creativity as a source of connection and renewal.

Lotte Glob Geologist’s Diary(Mixed Media)

Steve Dilworth’s “Beaked Bird” (Bronze ed 2 of 5) is a beautifully balanced and poised structure of interlocking forms, both masculine and feminine. It is a seamless and sensual work, pivoting on ambiguity, the hollows and contours of form evocative of a seed or stage of evolution of some as yet undiscovered species. Dilworth transforms our conception of sculpture as an object with the act of making and seeing a transformative process. This can be sensed and felt in “Swift” (Harris Stone and Swift) an exquisitely crafted hand held sculptural object, mask and bird like in form and powerfully ritualistic in its centre of gravity. Hollows on the underside connect with your fingers, it is an object meant to be held with the weight at its core bound to the centre of the viewer/participant like a divining rod. The rhythmic asymmetry of its design and sweeping incised central curve are supremely elegant, engaging with flight of the imagination. The intimate scale of the object is monumental in its associations. It is birth, death and becoming in a single object, with the inner and outer forms of equal value and importance. The energies and origins of the artist’s chosen materials drawn from the landscape are held within. It is wonderful to see the immediacy of the artist’s sketches nearby and the distillation of form and ideas realised in bronze and stone.

During an interview in 2006 when I asked what drew him initially to sculpture he replied; “I’m an atheist and an anti-theist. Art has replaced all of that spiritual side. So what it is to me is to try to make some sort of sense of what is a nonsensical place- of what we are. It is just exploring that and trying to understand. I don’t really see it as sculpture parse, but as objects and that’s what I make…For me the fantastic thing about making objects is that you’re making real things, they’re not about something, they’re not pretending to be something else, they are actually what they are- what it is in its entirety, whether you can see it or not.”

Steve Dilworth Beaked Bird (Bronze ed 2 of 5)

Steve Dilworth Swift (Harris Stone and Swift)

A subtle and insightful artist, Mary Bourne’s “Many Moons” (Granite) are a moving sequence of form and light in gently contouring granite. The tonal exposure of light in carving the stone is part of this dynamic, each lunar phase providing a moment of contemplation and transition. “One Loch Two Days” (Granite) presents oblong bodies of water with the emotional weight of the choppy, turbulent surface of one and the smoothed calm of the other. These gestural marks in stone are mirrored in Bourne’s calligraphic ink drawings “Wood on Coreen Hills 1 & 2” which are striking in their simplicity and grace. Bourne conveys the movement of timeless elements with enviable economy.

Well known for her ingenious wildlife sculptures in scrap metal, drawing is an integral part of Helen Denerley’s practice. “Two Cows”, “Knee Study”, “Harris Hawk” (Charcoal) and “Female Nude” (Ink on paper) reveal her keen observation of line and form. In “Female Nude” Denerley reduces the figure to a few essential lines, communicating the attitude, character and physicality of the figure stripped back to its essential energetic core. It is a quality often to be found in her animal sculptures, which are fleshed out by the viewer led by line and small, finely tuned details that animate the structure. Rather than a solid body there is a space for the viewer to dive into, fuelled by the spirit and movement of the animal.

Like many of his box constructions Will Maclean’s “Barents Box” (Mixed Media) is a cabinet of human memory and inward navigation, composed of found objects many layers deep. Discarded materials and objects are enshrined and revealed in all their tactile beauty. “Transom” (Mixed media) with fragments and objects embedded in the distressed surface of wood worn by time, human hands and the sea, is almost figurative in its three part structure; appearing like a standing figure with outstretched arms or wings. The white paint of the Plimsoll line anchors the object above and below, while the concave hollow at the centre feels like a space for the mind to dwell. “Black Vessel Foundering” (Mixed Media) simultaneously emerging out of and sinking into a heavy, black rectangular base is a vessel pared down and skeletal in form, with doll like torso’s embedded in the cross sections. It is a psychologically tense piece of work, anchored to a dark space of the viewer’s own imagining. Maclean’s expansively spartan drawing “Chief Officer’s Log” (Mixed Media) suspended on a ground of white, contains a fragment of history embedded in the surface of the drawing and a trajectory of written text across the viewer’s horizon line. The circular focal point and outline of a submarine plumb depths of pure white.

Will Maclean Transom (Mixed Media)

Will Maclean Black Vessel Foundering (Mixed Media)

Gerald Laing’s witty pencil on paper drawing “One more cup of coffee for I go” with just the legs and elegantly heeled feet of the female guest visible, pares down drawn lines to lead the viewer to a space beyond the page where we are free to imagine the sitter. “Studies for Dreaming” (Pencil drawing on paper) reveal Laing’s observant eye, distilled beautifully into the angular geometry of Galina VIII (Bronze, ed 4 of 10). “Hijacker”(1978, Bronze ed 5 of 10) is another intriguing work, both as an image of femininity and a reference to the militant Baader Meinhof group. “Twentieth Century Monument” (Bronze and Stainless Steel) feels like a mausoleum for Western Culture in its fusion of traditional bronze and industrial stainless steel.

Eight Sculptors and their Drawings is an exciting celebration of some of the country’s finest artists, each with their unique insights, energy and process. Far from the image of an elevated remote object on a plinth this show resoundingly presents a living art form of multiple dimensions.

All images by kind permission of Kilmorack Gallery http://www.kilmorackgallery.co.uk

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Category Archives: Kilmorack Gallery

PART TWO 2017

Scottish artists inspired by the sea

Northern Light

Sam Cartman, Steve Dilworth and Patricia Cain

Kilmorack Winter Exhibition

Eight Sculptors & Their Drawings