Artist Uncovered: Catriona Mann

It is difficult if not impossible to imagine Catriona Mann ever being idle. In her own words, she likes to have a project on the go that “she can sink her teeth into” and she always finds plenty to keep herself busy.

Sylvia’s Lilies 91x91cm, mixed media

image courtesy of the artist

Having first graduated in Fine Art at Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art, she went on to study law.  She combined law and painting for a while until her children came along. Nowadays she finds law very useful to advise young artists and art organisations on tricky issues regarding copyright and contracts. 

Madonna, Siena Cathedral 72x51cm, mixed media

AiH Collection

She has made her mark on the art scene in Scotland in many ways. She got involved with ‘Paintings in Hospitals, Scotland’ from the start in 1991 as a founder trustee and as some readers will know, ‘Art in Healthcare’ was born of PiHS in 2005. An elected Professional Member of the Council of Visual Arts Scotland, she is a past President of Visual Arts Scotland and currently a Director of Exhibiting Societies of Scottish Artists.
She has also found time to renovate her house to its former glory and being a keen gardener, created a beautiful garden with flowers to inspire her from an overgrown mess. 

Daffodils 91x91cm (detail)

image courtesy of the artist

She describes her artworks as drawings rather than paintings. Indeed the prevailing linearity brings out their dreamlike feel and the words she frequently includes for their visual impact are evocative of surrealist automatic writing.

Shipping Forecast 91x91cm, mixed media

image courtesy of the artist

Her sources of inspiration are wide-ranging: music, foreign travels and cultures, religion and the plants she grows in her garden, particularly lilies for their shape. Her works are not simply representations of landscapes or seascapes but imaginary abstractions. For instance when a friend asked her to paint Iona, the green marble stones, known as ‘St Columba’s tears’ which he brought back from the island, guided the colours in the painting.

Celtic Blessing 30x30cm, mixed media

image courtesy of the artist

Mann does not paint on conventional canvas or paper, she prefers to work on mounting card which is strong enough to withstand her particular method of working. 
Forgoing brushes, she builds up layers of pigment and collage with watercolour crayons, water-based paint and tissue paper that give her better control and if the painting is not working, she simply scrapes off certain areas and starts again. Traces of the previous drawings remain visible on the surface. She welcomes these ghostly residues and integrates them into the next stage of the painting. She has very seldom regretted making such radical decisions. She believes that artists should experiment and take risks to push their work forward.

Venetian Facade 96x81cm, mixed media

AiH Collection

Sometimes she even peels the entire top layer right off the forgiving card. She showed me one of these discarded ’skins’ stretched out in her studio. It is down to her experience and skill that such a large area has survived in one piece this forceful separation. She will later integrate parts of it into new works. 
This process of deconstruction, reconstruction and metamorphosis denotes the close relationship, dependence even, between Mann’s finished paintings and her rejects and I am reminded of Picasso’s famous quote “The very act of creation is first an act of destruction”.

Lux Aeterna 91x91cm, mixed media

image courtesy of the artist

This is an artist who finds it liberating and inspiring to subvert conventions and who positively thrives on a state of creative flux. She explains that she starts with an idea but not a vision and that her most successful works have happened when she is least sure of the outcome, adding: “if it is too easy what’s the point?”

The following anecdote illustrates this statement. She recently brought back some incense sticks from Vietnam, not the usual twig-like sticks but five-feet long poles painted in striking red with gold lettering. Their transport back to Scotland took some resourceful wrapping and even more ingenious convincing of airline staff and customs officers. But in the end it was worth it. They arrived intact and will be featuring in future works. 

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

With thanks to Catriona Mann

For further information:
http://www.visualartsscotland.org/?page_id=608 
http://www.scottish-art-scene.com/ZSAS%20Q%209.pdf 
www.rsw.org.uk
www.catrionamann.com


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: Marjorie I Campbell 1936-1999

Marjorie Campbell was a professional book illustrator, graphic designer and lecturer. She was a most talented and prolific artist who left a collection of works that amaze by their diversity and strength.

Art work for the book jacket for ‘The Emperor’s Winding Sheet’

image courtesy of A G Campbell

Marjorie’s younger sister, Dr Alison Kerr, has made a meticulous inventory of her sketches, drawings and paintings and numerous sketchbooks. She showed me a selection while telling me her family history. The two girls were born in northern China where their parents were medical missionaries during the Sino-Japanese war. When their father died of typhoid aged 31, their mother had to make the perilous journey to the coast during brief periods of ceasefire with her two very young daughters of three years and eleven months respectively before boarding a ship home, a passage which during WWII, was fraught with danger.

One Feather & Four Stones 

image courtesy of A G Campbell

Back in Scotland, they settled down first in Inverness-shire and later in Edinburgh. Theirs was an artistic, musical and very supportive family. They occasionally received visits from missionary friends who would mesmerize their young audience with true and heroic stories. Later Marjorie would provide others with the same warmth and generosity she had grown up with. 

Edinburgh Castle Sketch 

Art in Healthcare Collection

Her talent was soon noticed and nurtured at home and at school. Alison remembers how their mother, now a teacher, involved her older daughter in creating art work in preparation for her own class teaching and in drawing paper dolls with which the two girls played. The family enjoyed outdoor pursuits such as camping and cycling that offered many sketching and painting opportunities. The Highland and Hebridean landscapes impressed Campbell early on, particularly the island of Lismore where she would often return as an adult with her husband and four daughters. 

Untitled [seascape], watercolour

image courtesy of A G Campbell

In 1954 Campbell went to Edinburgh College of Art, winning scholarships to London in 1956 and Paris in 1957. She qualified as a designer and book illustrator, a considered choice that combined her love of books and art and could earn an income. She became a Member of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers in 1985 and also applied her design talent to quilting for her family and friends. In 1989 she founded Luckenbooth, a small crystal engraving business, in collaboration with engraver Wilma MacKenzie.

Croft Cottage & Sitted Man, screen print

AiH Collection

In parallel with her professional practice, Campbell never ceased to draw and paint the world around her, her children, still lifes and flowers.  These loose and expressionist sketches, quickly executed, reveal an artist always challenging herself and equally at ease with representational or abstract language.

Untitled [abstract drawing], ink

image courtesy of A G Campbell

Dr Kerr explains that Campbell did not regard these experimental and fluid works as especially significant and many were given away or simply disposed of but those she kept were tucked away in an attic space. It was only after her death that her close family discovered the extent of her output and have since endeavoured to make it known.
For a couple of years Campbell had a studio in an abandoned brick works near Edinburgh, an environment that inspired a series of works featuring industrial rejects that she endowed with animal-like presence

.Untitled [industrial reject], watercolour

image courtesy of A G Campbell

Marjorie would have approved wholeheartedly the donation of sixteen of her works to Art in Healthcare to brighten up healthcare settings. Together they showcase the artist’s talent in a variety of media such as watercolour, pen and ink, screen print and oil from the fine details of ‘Edinburgh Castle’ to her powerful and subjective landscapes and seascapes. 
A surprise for the family was to discover several doll pictures among the attic stash. Reminiscent of her childhood cut outs, these dolls, despite their smiley face, are poignantly eerie and allude to carefully hidden turmoil.

Untitled [doll], watercolour

image courtesy of A G Campbell

As a whole the collection offers a remarkable insight into a personal artistic journey that epitomizes the renaissance of Scottish art in the second half of the twentieth century. It deserves to be pored over and appreciated by a much wider public. 

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

With thanks to Dr A Kerr and A G Campbell

Further information:

Marjorie I Campbell's website http://www.marjoriecampbellina.com/main.htm 

Luckenbooth Fine Arts 
http://www.scotlandsglass.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=269:wilma-mackenzie-luckenbooth-gallery&catid=16:glass-makers-a-c&Itemid=8


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: 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: Gill Tyson

A multiple practice

Gill Tyson has no less than eighteen works with Art in Healthcare, more than any other artist in the Collection.  Together they denote a wide range of media and printmaking techniques, extensive travels across the globe, a love for remote landscapes and last but not least, a giving disposition.

Doubtful Spring  lithograph 79x72cm

Art in Healthcare Collection

She exudes vitality and it comes as no surprise to learn that she studied the joint MA (Hons) in History of Art and Drawing and Painting at the University of Edinburgh. She reckons that her multi-tasking approach to work is due to this early dual training.

Printmaking was an option Tyson took in her final undergraduate years and she found that the department’s nurturing ambience suited her better than Drawing and Painting. Soon after graduating she joined the Printmakers Workshop, later to become Edinburgh Printmakers where she found the same support she had enjoyed at art college. Typically she soon gave back as much as she had received by serving as chairperson on their committee at a pivotal time of change in the 1980s.

Big Sky By Lismore   screenprint and lithograph 90x119cm

Art in Healthcare Collection

She is clearly passionate about printmaking and while lithography is her main practice, she uses a whole variety of techniques from traditional to digital technology. This is no mean feat as they all work on different principles. She loves the lithographic process and finds the grinding and preparation of the stone relaxing and conducive to the planning of her composition. Printmaking is all about deconstructing the image and rebuilding it layer by layer, like a slow form of painting, she explains, and because colours are applied sequentially, you have to adapt each one according to the others.

Rackwick  screenprint and lithograph 56x68cm

Art in Healthcare Collection

She frequently mixes elements from these different techniques to capture even the most subtle effect, screenprinting for opacity, manière noire for a touch of drama, soap washes for paler appeal and hand-drawn marks for direct impact. Her range of skills and her ability to adapt and switch between methods have proved to be most useful to her at times when working away in less well equipped studios.

This versatility imparts freshness and immediacy to her works while her calculated economy of details draws you into her compositions. You feel included in the landscape rather than an onlooker.

The End Of The Road - Craignish lithograph and screenprint 38x57cm

image courtesy of the artist

Her predilection for marginal places has taken her to St Kilda, the Lofoten Islands and the Namib desert among others, all names synonymous with harsh and precarious living. Humans’ aptitude to survive in those inclement conditions is often acknowledged in her vast landscapes by some small and somewhat futile signs of their presence like a telephone box or a tattered poster. She dedicated her exhibition ‘Shelter’ at the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh in 2013 to this topic.

Out To The Atlantic  screenprint 63x85cm

Art in Healthcare Collection

Gill Tyson is currently organising an exhibition of fine prints created by the Edinburgh printing firm Harley Brothers whose master printers collaborated with the great names of Scottish art during the 1950s and 60s before going into decline. Their lithographs of works by Anne Redpath and Elizabeth Blackadder and many more will be brought together for the first time in Gallery Ten in Edinburgh, a space Tyson co-founded in 2012.

Strange Place, Believe Me  lithograph and screenprint 83x90cm

image courtesy of the artist

She is delighted to have been selected as the 2014 Printmaker of the Year by ‘Printfest’, an event based in Ulverston in Cumbria across the bay where she was born. She will be making new work during her residency and will help generate interest into her art, a role she is looking forward to with characteristic enthusiasm.

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

With thanks to Gill Tyson

Links to further information

http://www.gilltyson.com/

http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/

http://www.openeyegallery.co.uk/artist-details/gill-tyson/

http://galleryten.co.uk/forthcoming-exhibitions/

http://www.printfest.org.uk/printmaker_of_the_year.html

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.

Artwork at Drumbrae Care Home, Edinburgh

Drumbrae House is a new state-of-the-art, 60 bed care home commissioned by the City of Edinburgh Council and built just last year off Ardshiel Avenue. 

Staff and residents, along with their relatives and members of the local community, voted from a list of four potential names with Drumbrae House being the clear winner.

A beautiful home like this needed beautiful artwork so Graham Construction very kindly sponsored the rental of 26 original works of art from the Art in Healthcare Collection to be displayed in the home for the enjoyment of the staff, residents and visitors. 

 

Here are the artworks selected by the staff and you can click on any of the images to find out more about the artist, their inspirations and their artistic processes. 

 

 

 

Thank you once again to Graham Construction for their generous contribution.