Artist Uncovered: David Michie OBE, RSA, FRSA

“All the wonderful things that happen through the commonplace” 

Art in Healthcare included no less than three paintings by David Michie in their relatively small but perfectly formed 2014 Festival exhibition ‘The Healing Power of Art’, such is the enduring appeal of the renowned artist.

The Flamenco Dancer  oil on canvas, 38 x 38 cms

image courtesy of Art in Healthcare

When I first interviewed him two years ago Michie talked about his early years spent in a small village on the French Riviera with his artistic parents and two brothers, where the bright colours and ambient zest for life helped shape his love of nature and his outlook on the world and on life. He also showed me the dozens of sketchbooks where he recorded his observations, a lifetime of visual data.
At the end of that first meeting he mentioned the influence that French cinema had on him as a young man but we had ran out of time so it is with keen anticipation that I revisit him to talk further about this and other sources of inspiration.

Two Pigeons oil on canvas, 43 x 58 cms

Art in Healthcare Collection

He recalls how as a young art student in Edinburgh, he was encouraged by his tutors to go to the National Gallery of Scotland and look up the great masters to help him decide what theme would define his practice. Although he admired them, the young Michie struggled to engage personally with the grand social and political topics of the larger than life dramatic compositions by Rubens or Poussin. Instead he was much more drawn towards the recently released films from France and Italy shown at the independent Cameo cinema, a welcome and exciting change from the staple diet of American and British films that dominated all other screens in the late 1940s when television sets were still a rarity.
He immersed himself in the neorealism of films like Marcel Carné’s Les Enfants du Paradis which he watched at least fifteen times or Marcel Pagnol’s Marseilles trilogy and other masterpieces by Roberto Rossellini or Vittorio de Sica. 

Autumn Garden with Honesty oil on canvas, 91.5 x 127 cms

image courtesy of The Scottish Gallery

These cinematographic encounters all contributed to Michie’s realisation that his interest lay, not in grand historical paintings but in the beauty of the everyday observed at first hand, the view from his window, the racing pigeons shown by miners at a local Pigeon Fancying fair, a bunch of flowers in a jug. He sums it up by quoting Paul Sérusier, an influential French painter of the turn of the twentieth century, who said “It is the role of the artist to see the significant in the ordinary.”
Not surprisingly he also felt much more drawn towards the hedonistic interiors of Pierre Bonnard and Raoul Dufy or Henri Matisse’s sensuous odalisks than towards the raw emotions exuding from the works of British artists of the latter half of the twentieth century whose penchant for pathos he sees as a throwback to Puritan times. 

At a Window  oil on canvas, 115.5 x 115.5 cms

Art in Healthcare Collection

This preference for informal and organic compositions was further confirmed to him one significant summer day while walking around his friends John Houston’s and Elizabeth Blackadder’s garden when he was bowled over by nature’s riotous colours and proliferation that pushed back the man-made backdrop of geometric trellisses. This revelatory moment was all the more compelling because he had been engaged for some time in painting severe compositions. It was to influence his whole practice and inspire many plant portraits not out of interest in botany but as a lover of nature, in his own words, “rhyming shapes, rhyming colour”. 

This idea of capturing the moment brings us to the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Michie explains that the impromptu appearance of his photographs was in fact the result of hours spent at a particular spot waiting for that brief second, “anticipating that something was going to happen, much like a tiger ready to pounce” he adds. Cartier-Bresson was also a purist who would present a final image, probably one of many rejects, unadulterated and framed exactly as it had been shot.
Paradoxically there rests the connection between the two artists as Cartier-Bresson’s long drawn out creative process is in fact the reverse of Michie’s own painstaking method of painting that he describes as “a sum of corrections” based as it is on many marks, scraped and painted over time and time again until he has achieved the air of fortuitous and effortless spontaneity that typifies his style.

In the Fitness Pool with Noodles  oil on canvas, 40.5 x 35.5 cms

image courtesy of Art in Healthcare

Another favourite filmmaker of his of that period is Jacques Tati. He particularly remembers Jour de Fête, the hilarious slapstick account of a postman’s tribulations set in a small French village. Its humour is due to Tati’s perfect timing and miming genius in the main role. Michie was particularly captivated by the beautifully observed tiny incidents that all add up to turn this very simple narrative into a work of art. His own power of observation and sense of humour come through in many of his paintings, such as the deliciously witty In the Fitness Pool with Noodles where he pokes gentle fun at aqua aerobics enthusiasts.

Michie’s paintings are always born as a response to what he sees around him and from observations captured in a few seconds in his sketchbooks. His latest project is the publication of a selection of these sketches. This book promises to be as entertaining as it will be revealing of his many sources of inspiration.

With thanks to David Michie

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


References

Art in Healthcare Festival Exhibition 2014 http://aihexhibition.blogspot.co.uk/ 
Art in Healthcare blog David Michie, November 2012 http://artinhealthcare-scotland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/artist-uncovered-david-michie-obe-rsa.html 

The Scottish Gallery http://www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/artist/david_michie

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: Gabrielle Reith

It is hard to imagine today but there was once a time when hospital walls were kept resolutely bare for the sake of hygiene as paintings were considered to be dust traps. Happily these days are long gone and it is now widely recognised that images have a powerful and positive impact on the wellbeing of all who frequent healthcare settings, the patients of course and also the visitors and staff.

Study for Tuscan Summer mixed media, 38x38cm
AiH Collection

On a primal level images connect directly with our subconscious and we respond to them with our senses, our feelings and emotions, even more so, research reveals, when they depict nature and the landscape.

Gabrielle Reith’s paintings with their strong colours and forms have the ability to convey a sense of place, real or imagined, and to transport us somewhere else.

Her linear compositions transform terrain and houses into elemental shapes verging on abstraction. The modernist square format she uses here serves to intensify the sense of rhythm and tension within the canvas. The artist focuses our mind on a particular feature or colour thus enhancing our experience of the work.

Study for Assisi  mixed media, 38x38cm
AiH Collection

Reith graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 1998 and the paintings in the Art in Healthcare Collection date from her degree show. She was brought up in Aberdeenshire where she still lives today. Landscapes of great beauty have influenced her all her life and have trained her eyes from an early age to process seasonal changes and their colour variations. She has taken this practice with her on her travels abroad.

In both paintings Study for Assisi and Study for a Tuscan Summer the heat of Italy is palpable in the ochre tainted stones and purple shadows. The architectural details are abbreviated to curves and arches like shorthand signs to evoke the romanesque style typical of that region.

Study for Montenagiche mixed media, 38x38cm
AiH Collection

In sharp contrast, the two other paintings in the Art in Healthcare Collection with their blue and green tones immerse the viewer in the coolness of the Tuscan night. When the sun has ceased to beat down hard and recedes, giving way to dusk and darkness, ambiguous shapes begin to emerge, assuming mass and volume and an air of mystery.

Study for 10 Summer Minutes  mixed media, 38x38cm
AiH Collection

Reith reinvents the landscape. She flattens it and then reintroduces depth with patterns and texture. By breaking it down into distinctive shapes, motifs and dark outlines that delineate the blocks of colours, the artist creates a universal language of signs and symbols.

Through this process, the landscape loses its specificity, it escapes the confines of geographical coordinates and enters the realm of the imagination. It becomes all our landscapes.

Since the late 1990s, Gabrielle Reith has developed a successful practice as designer and maker of a varied range of products inspired by the natural world and her young family. With their strong lines and colours, her recent textiles, carved jewellery and paper designs represent the natural expansion of her painterly talent.

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

Gabrielle Reith's website http://www.g-r-a.co.uk/

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: Elspeth Lamb RSA

The eight prints by Elspeth Lamb in the AiH Collection span three decades and altogether encapsulate the internationally renowned printmaker’s diverse repertoire of silkscreen, collage, lithograph, screenprinting and papermaking.
The titles March Hare, Miracle Fish and Milagro give us an inkling of Lamb’s predilection for fairy tales and enchantment and this is indeed confirmed unmistakably by the allusion to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the cover image of her website and by the artist’s long blond hair that echoes the famous golden locks. Motifs from Lewis Carroll’s classic novel recur in Lamb’s iconography, not only the hare but also the ubiquitous ellipse, sometime egg, sometime mirror. 

Spinner screenprint, 103x113.8cm

AiH Collection

These references to Alice seem most appropriate when you consider that it is the privilege of artists to cross over two worlds, the mundane and the extraordinary and to take the viewers through the looking glass into the land of dreams. And as in Alice’s story, there is a certain frisson of danger in Lamb’s make-believe art with appellations like ‘chimera’, ‘Les Fleurs du Mal’ and ‘cantrip’, the Scots word for magical spell.
Printmaking is steeped in rituals and processes. But for printmakers, the exacting nature of their methods is not limiting but opens up an ever-increasing array of possibilities the more skilled they become.

Milagro lithograph, 125x92cm

AiH Collection

Elspeth Lamb is an expert in her art form which she taught for over twenty years at Edinburgh College of Art, latterly as Head of the Printmaking department. Then in 1999 she left college to embrace a freelance career, a momentous decision that allowed her to divide her time from then on between her own practice and teaching through workshops.
Travels had always been important to her work and she was now able to spend even more time abroad at the invitation of art institutions. Japan held a particular fascination for her and in 2000 she got the opportunity to immerse herself in its culture when she was selected for an international residency programme. She spent ten weeks in the village of Nagasawa and turned the tables on herself by becoming the pupil of master craftsmen to study moku hanga, a water-based method of woodblock printing that produces stunningly vivid and transparent colours. 

March Hare screenprint, 71x41cm

AiH Collection

She returned to Japan two years later to learn traditional papermaking as part of her research for a book she had been commissioned to write which was subsequently published in 2006 under the title Papermaking for Printmakers.  Lamb called upon a number of experts to work with her on this very detailed handbook and in her introduction she explains eloquently the seduction and rationale of papermaking that she describes as “a tactile revolt against the limitations of the flat, one-dimensional print”. 
Physically challenging and time consuming, it is also enormously rewarding because the artists can add to the pulp specially chosen elements that evoke places and emotions through touch and smell as well as visually. The end result is two artworks in one, the paper and the print which complement each other perfectly, layers upon layers.

Miracle Fish screenprint, 70x40cm

AiH Collection

Inspired by her two visits to Japan, Lamb produced in 2006 an artist’s book Nagasawa Cantrips. In this limited edition of ten, the artist has conjured up the best of her skills to bring together traditional and modern printing methods, Western and Eastern thinking and her favourite themes. March Hare and Miracle Fish are two of a few prints that were produced separately and that can be enjoyed today by the patients, staff and visitors of the healthcare setting they enhance.

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

For further information:
http://www.lambbo.macmate.me/Site/Elspeth%20Lamb.html 
http://vimeo.com/15252990 
http://www.endeavor.or.jp/nap/index.html 
Papermaking for Printmakers by Elspeth Lamb, pub. A&C Black, London



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: Duncan Pettigrew 1973-1993

"Love your art"

In many ways Duncan Pettigrew was a typical adolescent full of youthful enthusiasm and confidence. Art was his passion and although his most productive period only spanned a couple of years, he left behind enough works to fill up several gallery spaces. 

Self-portrait (with hat) oil, 100x76cm 

(aged 16 when at Edinburgh Academy)

image courtesy of J and M Pettigrew

His numerous self-portraits show a young man looking straight at the viewer, not with arrogance but with the assurance that befitted the accomplished draughtsman that he was. The word ‘extraordinary’ comes to mind when describing the extent and range of his talent. John Brown who taught him in fifth and sixth year at Edinburgh Academy in Edinburgh and himself a renowned artist was impressed by his technical ability at such a young age.
The wealth of details in his works reveal to us his sharp observation skills and his delight in putting together carefully conceived and balanced compositions livened up with boldly contrasting light and dark tones for dramatic effect.

Self-portrait (with trophy)  oil, 110x76cm

(aged 17 when at Edinburgh Academy, 

inspired by the award of the Burness Trophy for Painting)

image courtesy of J and M Pettigrew

Duncan may have inherited his aptitude from his artistic parents but his competence was entirely his own and earned through fervent practice. He was constantly drawing and his sketchbooks show how he learnt about the way things connect and relate to one another:  the front door to their house, the large cheese plant sprawling up the banister, the florid wallpaper in a holiday home abroad. 
This fusion of eagerness and talent gave rise to the prodigious pace that defined his working process. His father recalls that in the time it took him to do half a drawing, Duncan would do four or five.

Sack Series No 1 pastel, 53x41cm
(still life in LSA studio)

AiH Collection

He had been accepted by Glasgow School of Art when he was diagnosed with leukaemia. After his first stay in hospital, he surprised everyone by producing seven large self-portraits within a week, each one named after the day it was completed. This series of charcoal drawings shows his keen sense of humour as in Sunday where he drew himself wrapped up in toilet paper, the one thing that was close at hand and in abundant supply. His art became his way of thumbing his nose at his illness.
While in hospital he received a visit from John Bellany who was a friend of his mother from art college. Bellany gave him a large compendium of Picasso’s works with the hand-written dedication “Love your Art”. 
Duncan spent the following year at Leith School of Art (LSA). In this nurturing environment and with renewed strength, he was able to enjoy this most creative time to the full and never wasted one moment. Typically the four studies in the Sack Series currently with Art in Healthcare were executed as a single studio assignment. 

Sack Series no 3 pencil, 53x41cm
(still life in LSA studio)

AiH Collection

LSA principal Philip Archer who taught him, remembers clearly not only his talent but also his strength of character and clarity of thinking beyond his years and of course his sense of humour. He recalls that Duncan worked hard and wanted to be pushed hard but at the same time that he did not take himself too seriously and held on to his achievements lightly. 
In 1994 Philip Archer and the Pettigrew family put together a show to celebrate Duncan’s artworks that filled the walls of LSA. A book entitled Love your Art accompanied the exhibition and helped raise money for the Leukaemia and Bone Marrow Transplant Fund at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. 

Self-portrait (Sunday) charcoal, 130x75cm

image courtesy of J and M Pettigrew

Duncan’s talent and fortitude inspired all those who came across him and this extract from a poem by Dylan Thomas that Philip Archer appended to his foreword to Love your art is a particularly fitting tribute to this remarkable artist:

                                         “Do not go gentle into that goodnight,

                                          Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

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

With thanks to Jennifer and Maurice Pettigrew and to Philip Archer.
With thanks to Soosan Danesh for photographing the self-portraits above.

Love your art is available for borrowing from Edinburgh libraries.

Related link
Leith School of Art http://www.leithschoolofart.co.uk/

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: Paul Martin

Of beeswax and metaphysics

Earlier this year, Art in Healthcare were delighted to welcome in their Collection two paintings by Paul Martin, one of the leading exponents of encaustic art today. In this process the artist mixes pure pigments with melted beeswax over many layers often resulting in dreamlike paintings with a matt and subtle finish.

 Repapering  oil, encaustic,149x180cm

AiH Collection

Encaustic is about experimenting with natural ingredients and can be traced back to antiquity. This suits Paul Martin very well for here is an artist who is profoundly inspired by nature and favours continuity and authenticity over shock of the new.
The two paintings, ‘Repapering’ and ‘The Sculptor in his Studio’ which both date back to the 1980s, are figurative works with similar tones and aesthetics. Their titles evoke ordinary activities but the unrealistic and staged feel of their compositions suggest metaphors instead. They tease the viewers with a myriad of questions.

The Sculptor’s Studio  oil, encaustic,146x192cm

AiH Collection

In Repapering, why is the father’s head out of sight? What is the mother doing in the background? What is the flowery pattern on the ripped wallpaper telling us? Is the child playing with a mirror? Is it a mirror? What is a mirror? 

In The Sculptor’s Studio, what is this broken circle the artist is holding in his right hand? Is it a tool? Is it an allusion to the mirror in the other painting? Are the square and triangular patterns on the floor some mathematical puzzles? Who are the sculpted figures? 

4 , 'Inscapes' series
image courtesy of the artist

By setting these paintings like theatrical tableaux the artist wishes to open up these fundamental questions. And of course there are no right or wrong answers, just wide ranging possibilities. For instance in Repapering, some viewers might see a resemblance between the sculptor and Socrates, the founder of Western philosophy and between the bust being created and Socrates’ ‘spiritual son’, Immanuel Kant. And is it purely coincidental that Socrates is credited with a particular method of enquiry known as Socratic Circles?

Crossing the Yellow River (detail, right panel) oil, encaustic, 215x157cm

image courtesy of the artist

Paul Martin’s disposition for debate was honed through discussions with his tutors and peers first at the Birmingham School of Art, a strong advocate of Abstract Expressionism, and later at the Royal Academy, a calculated choice that brought him back to figurative drawing.  Then teaching came naturally to him as something that “he could not not do” but he kept up his own painting practice in parallel with his teaching career through the years and found that this dual focus benefited both his work and his students.

Song Upon Song Upon Song varnishes, gesso, ink on paper, 201x78x62cm

image courtesy of the artist

The sixty-seven works in his recent exhibition 'When Men and Mountains Meet' at the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh were painted over the last seven years. The style has changed since the 1980s. Now vigorous and expressionist marks fill up large canvasses sometime inhabited by outlined figures whose beautiful faces peer quizzically beyond the canvas. The painted surface is more gritty and organic but it is still sealed with wax which, says Martin, “metaphysically bonds” us all together with nature.

Race oil, encaustic, mixed media

image courtesy of the artist

The artist stresses that the concerns are the same today as twenty five years ago. The exhibition also acknowledges his reading of ‘Sonnets to Orpheus’ by Rainer Maria Rilke that has taken his investigation into the nature of nature into new directions. References to bird songs and flowing arias remind us that humanity should respect nature which is to be enjoyed by all living organisms.

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

With thanks to Paul Martin

For further information:
Paul Martin's website: http://www.paulmartinstudio.com/
Paul Martin's exhibition 'When Men and Mountains Meet'  http://www.whenmenandmountainsmeet.co.uk/#!exhibition/cnnt
Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh http://dovecotstudios.com/about/
Warburton Gallery http://www.warburtongallery.com/#!when-men-and-mountains-meet/c12l0


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: Carolyn Burchell

A sandy beach, rows of windows set against a colourful facade, these scenes could be teeming with life and yet most of Carolyn Burchell’s paintings are devoid of people with perhaps just a hint of human presence here and there. We search for clues that would make the view distinctive or unique. 

Camusdarach Beach 42x55cm, acrylic on board, 2005

AiH Collection

Far from being put off by this stillness and emptiness, we find ourselves instead drawn towards it, the universal features acting as an invitation, a signal for our imagination to step in and we start weaving stories of our own. We begin to fill the painting with people we know and with our own memories of playing on a beach or of exploring Mediterranean villages.

Bar (Zaragoza) 56x76cm, mixed media on paper,1990

AiH Collection

Carolyn Burchell is a quiet and private artist who has been much inspired by her travels throughout Europe, latterly Norway and Poland in particular. For her the landscape is not about the faithful depiction of nature or memorable buildings but a means of expressing internal emotions. Working from detailed sketches drawn in situ and from photographs, back in her studio she teases out metaphors by carefully editing the composition. This process of simplification instils a dreamlike feel to her paintings that reaches beyond the edges of her relatively small wood panels.

Beyond 26x29cm, acrylic on board, 2013

image courtesy of the artist

The added appeal of such symbolist landscapes for us viewers is that we can project our own mood onto them. Whether we are feeling sad or happy, the artist has provided us with the perfect setting for our own thoughts. 
Since she painted the works in the AiH Collection, Burchell went on to complete a Masters in Research at the Glasgow School of Art in 2010 where she chose to focus on the forest.  

Girl in Garden 23x30cm, watercolour, 2011

image courtesy of the artist

She became particularly interested in symbolism in landscape painting and read about Freud’s concept of the Uncanny and Jung’s theories of the unconscious, something she had not expected to do. She also spent much time drawing with charcoal exploring these ideas. 

Into the Unknown 49cm diameter on paper 84cm x 59cm, 2010

image courtesy of the artist

She found the experience challenging, inspiring and full of surprises. For instance she once did a series of twenty five drawings of a pathway through trees, each one copied from the one before forming a flickbook and short film. The subtle and gradual changes seemed to animate the whole sequence so much so that another student said it looked like a fire. 

Trees and woodlands occupy a special place in our psyche, they abound in folk and fairy tales and forests can be both places of refuge and danger. For Burchell who has been since childhood an avid reader of literature, often fiction and fantasy, woodlands are places of shelter where she can retreat among the trees. She sometimes puts herself in the picture as a small figure that stands alone.

Orange Blaze 28x28cm, acrylic on board, 2012

image courtesy of the artist

How did the Masters impact on her work? Burchell feels that the intensive period of drawing has livened up her brush strokes and given movement to her paintings. Looking at her more recent works, we can see how her favourite archetypes have been energized. The trees are now animated and more expressive of the artist’s emotions.

Fern Wings 20x23cm, acrylic on board, 2011

image courtesy of the artist

She describes her work as cathartic because she can lose herself and forget about life’s tribulations while painting and she encourages this healing process through community education among the adult classes she teaches including two recent series of workshops she led for Art in Healthcare in 2013 and early 2014.

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

With thanks to Carolyn Burchell

For further information  
http://www.axisweb.org/p/carolynburchell/
http://www.waspsstudios.org.uk/artists/153



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: 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.