A lightness of air

Last year I was very lucky to have my first exhibition with the Birch Tree Gallery, a beautiful little place on the main gallery high street in Edinburgh. It was a wonderful exhibition, beautifully curated by the owner Jurgita and paired up with the wonderful ceramic work of Steve Smith.

Now and then Jurgita runs an open call to the artists in her fold and so I was super excited to receive the invitation to respond to a poem she had chosen by a local poet, John Killick, who resides in East Lothian.

Having read the poem I decided to utilise a triptych which I had started as a demo piece in one of my workshops. The limited palette of yellow ochre, crimson alizarin, cerulean blue, titanium white and the textured surface of the painting resonated with the poem’s reference to textiles.

Introducing some opaque tints created quieter areas and at this point in the process the painting started to suggest a direction and my mark making became more considered.

My work usually has very high dark / light contrasts and I was conscious that I needed to create a brighter, more colourful piece that worked to the brief. It wasn't always comfortable and there were times I struggled to resolve the painting. The biggest struggle was to resist introducing a new colour to the palette and slip into my comfort zone of creating darker darks!

A lightness of air has been created using oils, cold wax and gold leaf.

RETURN OF THE NATIVE
by John Killick

In exile, he took the colours from the cloth.

Now he would give them back to the landscape where they belonged:

reddy-browns to the sun-scorched lichens,

purple and green to the heather-tops,

obsidian to the outcrops of rocks,

white to the sands and grey to the shallows,

cool blues into the translucency of the air.

Thus having unburdened himself of his memories

he had no need of the tweeds.

The return of the native exhibition, Birch Tree Gallery, Edinburgh from end August 2024.