Artist Uncovered: Marj Bond RSW

A Sensuous Practice

Marj Bond welcomes me into her house. From the front it looks just like a typical Fife cottage. As she takes me through to the back however I am transported into another world. The house has been extended into a large wooden conservatory where artworks and large fronds compete for space. The views stretch to the Lomond Hills in the distance. 

Her surroundings inspire Bond, not to paint them realistically, but in a sensorial sense. The scents, light and colour of a place as well as its social and cultural attributes all impact on her mood, wellbeing and creativity. The revelatory moments that have transformed her practice over the years were triggered by her discovery of exciting new environments. 

Oasis oil on canvas 106x106cm

AiH Collection

After graduating from Glasgow School of Art, she was expected to settle down and teach in her home town of Paisley but instead escaped to go and teach in North Uist where the Hebridean landscape and the Gaelic culture had a powerful effect on her.

Then in 1988 Bond went for a three months sabbatical tour of India with James Gray, her soul mate and architect who designed their house extension. This experience changed her life. She absorbed all these stimuli, the people, animals and architectural details, in sketches and photographs and later back home in the intimacy of her studio conjured them up again in stylised and whimsical compositions in a variety of media with layers of handmade Indian paper for textured effect and compelling colours. 

Kashmiri Shrine silkscreen print 75x106cm

AiH Collection

Intuitive glyphs and motifs started to appear, retrieved from her innermost self. The artist cannot explain their meaning, they simply take shape as she works out a question or a problem. Painting is therapy for her.

Her palette which had been subdued until then was now vibrant and her subsequent exhibition ‘Images of India’ at the Open Eye Gallery was a great success.  She went on many more trips to colourful destinations such as Cuba, Mexico and Southern Spain. She mentions the influence that the allegorical paintings of Zapotec-Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo had on her work.

Children of the Conquistadores etching 51x42cm

AiH Collection

In recent years Bond has become fascinated by Mary Queen of Scots and has painted several portraits of her. Mary had strong connections with Fife through Falkland Palace, the Scottish kings’ hunting retreat and her imprisonment in Lochleven Castle. The artist has deliberately exaggerated the oblong face. This elongation and the simplification of features are characteristic of Bond’s style and convey tension and emotion. Such stylisation is reminiscent of so-called primitive masks and of Alberto Giacometti’s work for instance that Bond admires. The long narrow nose stretches almost the whole length of the face to emphasise the wistful eyes and tight mouth.

Mary Queen of Scots Imprisoned in Loch Leven mixed media 23x23cm

image courtesy of the artist

Mary’s golden headdress shines like the halo of religious iconography, Eastern and Western alike, a suggestion reinforced by the gold cross showing under her ruff and by the flame-like cartouche above her head that bears her monogram. Her deathly-pale face appears to be floating against the dark background, alluding to her tragic end, a queen and a martyr saint all at once.  

Bond speaks of Mary’s fate with great empathy, how she had to give up the sensuous French court for the oppressive Scotland of John Knox, a destiny in reverse to her own it seems as her discovery of India and other inspiring countries fulfilled her passionate temperament.

She is currently working on a portrait of Joyce Laing, the Fife-based champion of ‘Outsider Art’ and pioneer of art therapy in Scotland. She hopes it will be exhibited in due course as a tribute to the sitter. Bond’s appreciation of this art form outside fine art conventions is entirely consistent with her own practice. 

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh

With thanks to Marj Bond

For further information:
http://www.rsw.org.uk/pages/members_page.php?recordID=302
http://www.openeyegallery.co.uk/artist-details/marj-bond/


And special thanks to Balfour Beatty Investments and Arts & Business Scotland for their financial support, which has enabled Art in Healthcare to produce 18 Artist Uncovered blog posts and accompanying video productions.

Artist Uncovered: Cat Outram

Liberating constraints

An etcher with thirty years experience Cat Outram practises in Edinburgh Printmakers studio where we meet. She is well known for her beautifully detailed and linear black and white drawings of Edinburgh and the varied Scottish landscape and for her studies of plants and objects. Is it purely coincidental that an enduring first impression of the UK as a seven year-old, is the snowy scenery that met her upon her arrival from Kenya?

Winter twilight 29x50cms

image courtesy of the artist

It was while studying Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art that she discovered printmaking. She took to it “like a duck to water” and promptly abandoned her paints and brushes much to the consternation of her D&P tutors!

Monochrome etching complements perfectly her fascination with light and tone and she thrives on the challenges it presents. In her preparatory sketches, she has trained herself to drain the colours out of the picture much like the process of black and white photography. She mentions Ansel Adams as particularly inspirational.

Top Flat Panorama 29x73cms

image courtesy of the artist

It is well-known that artists’ creativity is stirred up when faced with a challenge either self-imposed or brought upon them. Monet and his experiments with light and Matisse and his collages particularly come to mind. Outram explains that she decided to become an artist following the birth of her two sons and the ensuing restrictions on her time and movements. This career fitted well with her commitments and the necessity of making a living and enabled her to transcend her homebound circumstances. Her window series are particularly poignant and evocative of that period.

Seedheads 49x21cms

AiH collection, image courtesy of the artist

When she decided to introduce colours into her work, she had to find a way to do so within the technical constraints of printmaking and within her own range of skills. Unlike lithography or screenprinting where colour is an integral part of the process from the start, with etching, each colour requires a different plate. This is a painstaking process that needs great accuracy from the printmaker who has to line up each plate perfectly with the marks of the previous impression. She admits struggling with this level of precision and often ends up with rejects.

Snow with Beech Leaves  30x21cms

image courtesy of the artist

The artist had to find a solution to get round this problem. At that time, one of her sons, now grown-up, was in China and she reminded herself that Chinese art often introduces one colour only in a drawing to great effect. She promptly saw the potential for her etchings and has since made this single coloured spot distinctive of her style.

Earlier this year Outram took part in a collaborative project organised jointly by the Scottish Poetry Library and Edinburgh Printmakers that brought together twenty-four poets and twenty-four printmakers. The remit was very open but like etching, poetry is a discipline rich in constraints, rhyme, form and vocabulary among many others. When she and Ken Cockburn the poet discovered this shared characteristic in their respective practices they both set out to introduce parameters in their project for inspiration. The culmination of these collaborations is exhibited this month in both the SPL and EP gallery.

Close up, Possible Connections  29x42cms

image courtesy of the artist

Cat Outram had been searching for ways of expressing ideas through her art and she is now thinking about using her own words in her work. With this introduction of words and possibly, the use of a brush instead of the traditional needle to draw with, it is clear that at this point in her life when she has more time to devote to her practice than ever before, the artist is already looking for fresh boundaries and challenges that will continue to sustain and renew her imagination.

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh.

With thanks to Cat Outram.

 
Related links:

Cat Outram http://www.catoutramprintmaker.com/

Edinburgh Printmakers 'The Written Image'  http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/exhibitions/the-written-image

Scottish Poetry Library 'The Spoken Image'

http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/connect/events/spoken-image

And special thanks to Balfour Beatty Investments and Arts & Business Scotland for their financial support, which has enabled Art in Healthcare to produce 18 Artist Uncovered blog posts and accompanying video productions.

Artist Uncovered: Ade Adesina

Martine Foltier Pugh presents Art in Healthcare latest artist

One of the highlights of the Art in Healthcare calendar is the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) New Contemporaries annual exhibition, not only because of the concentration of emerging talents on display, hand picked amongst the best of Scotland’s recent graduates but also because they are able to purchase works for their collection with funding from the Hope Scott Trust. 

This year Art in Healthcare have been bowled over by the art of master printmaker Ade Adesina, who graduated from Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen.

                                                                                                                                                                           

    RSA exhibition, image courtesy of the artist

It is easy to see why. The Nigerian born artist now based in the UK brings together technical virtuosity with thought-provoking themes. His highly detailed lino cuts and etchings showcase his dual Nigerian and British cultural heritage and his concern for environmental issues is delivered with a keen sense of humour. The accuracy of his drawings comes mostly from direct observation recorded through sketches and photographs while experiencing other cultures. Travelling is important as it helps him formulate the issues of cultural identity that are at the heart of his practice. 

                                                                                                                                 

RSA exhibition, image courtesy of the artist

The amount of details and repetitive marks that fill his landscapes is astonishing, each print taking him on average two months to complete.  He recalls the moment when, while visiting Paris as an undergraduate, he was awestruck by an impressionist painting by Claude Monet where tiny brush strokes filled up the large canvas. Adesina revels in labour intensive processes.

“I like to work hard and I like people that are hard working. Seeing the Monet painting, I felt the pain and sleepless nights.”

Mirage lino cut 112cmx76cm

image courtesy of the artist

There are echoes of Monet’s paintings in ‘Mirage’, one of the three acquisitions by Art in Healthcare, where almost every head of wheat stands out across the expansive field. The deep trenches carved by heavy agricultural machinery take the eye down to the myriad of ripples on the Firth of Forth and to flotillas of fish farm enclosures flanked by the rail and road bridges, with the city spread around Edinburgh castle in the far distance. The use of iconic imagery here makes intensive farming appear even more incongruous and unsettling.

Decline lino cut 112cmx76cm

image courtesy of the artist

‘Decline’ is a comment on the disappearance of the majestic and slow growing baobabs because of unsustainable logging. In the print, the trees seem to act as buffers between the restless and troubled sky and the ground. What will happen when they have all gone?

North East Safari  etching 100cmx70cm

image courtesy of the artist

 In ‘North East Safari’, where ‘North East’ refers to the Grampian region with Dunnottar Castle and the oil rigs in the distance, the punch is forceful and the argument is multi-layered. From the nesting grouse, that famous native bird game, in the foreground to the African endangered wildlife roaming the plain below, the peace in this Garden of Eden is about to be shattered by the hunt appearing on the left while the feigned naivety of the composition derides colonial perceptions of African culture. 

This satirical element transforms the work and places Adesina within the tradition of artists such as Chris Offili and Yinka Shonibare who both inspire him.

Adesina’s remarkable talent was rewarded during the RSA New Contemporaries exhibition by no less than three prizes. He has also now sold out a number of print editions. Altogether this is a highly deserved achievement that predicts a bright future.

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh

Credits

With thanks to Ade Adesina for his information and images

Links

Ade Adesina website http://www.adeadesina.com

The Hope Scott Trust http://www.hopescotttrust.co.uk

Gray's School of Art http://www.rgu.ac.uk/about/faculties-schools-and-departments/faculty-of-design-and-technology/gray-s-school-of-art/gray-s-school-of-art

The Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporaries exhibition http://www.royalscottishacademy.org/pages/exhibition_frame.asp?id=392

And special thanks to Balfour Beatty Investments and Arts & Business Scotland for their financial support, which has enabled Art in Healthcare to produce 18 Artist Uncovered blog posts and accompanying video productions.