This autumn I returned in earnest to my studio for the first time since 2017. I’d still been making art here and there, but always in the margins. I am delighted to now be in a place where I can give more time and attention to my art-making again.
All this newfound creative freedom: where to start? It turns out I’ve begun by going back to my roots, focussing on portraits and cityscapes, which were what I exhibited in my first ever show back in Zurich, Switzerland, in 2008. The city in the scapes has changed, and the materials have shifted more towards mixed media and away from oil paint, but it still appears that my brain likes to start simply by looking around at the people and places nearby.
In this exhibition you’re seeing some of these new cityscapes, in particular those inspired by the area around my home in Stockbridge, Edinburgh. I spent a lot of time walking up and down the Water of Leith this summer, foraging for plants that I might turn into inks as part of my 100 Days Scotland project. This part of the planet is not new to me - in fact St Bernard’s Well featured in the paintings of my first Edinburgh exhibition in 2014 - but my ink-making project has led me to view this landscape through a new lens.
The work on exhibition here feels like just a start to me, the frantic scribblings of someone who can’t quite believe she’s free to play with the art supplies again. Each piece, within its layers, contains some of the botanical ink I made this year, along with charcoal (also handmade) and more conventional art supplies including pastels, gouache, acrylic, ink, and pencil.
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