Artist Uncovered: Barbara Rae

This month our tour of the Art in Healthcare gallery focuses on Royal Academician painter and printmaker, Barbara Rae. The four works in the Art in Healthcare collection illustrate some of the media and techniques used by the artist: printmaking, paint and collage. 

Mull Ferry  watercolour  105x88cm  1996
Art in Healthcare collection

Her creative process always begins with creating studies on location whatever the weather. She is currently away somewhere “on the west coast of Ireland, sketching near the ocean’s cliffs in wild weather” her spokesperson tells me.  But Barbara Rae is not interested in topographical features and rejects emphatically the label ‘landscape painter’. What she seeks out are the signs that show the passing of time and the craft of humankind that give pattern and structure to the landscape, as she explains:

"It's the historic aspect fashioned by mankind, whittled away by use and weather that fascinates, the outline of an ancient farm building half-hidden in dense grass, a portal, wooden door once used now broken, paint flaking, a standing stone engraving barely visible clad in moss. I take time, sometimes weeks to absorb, you might say "experience" an area and meet the people there before I begin work." (March 2013)

Walled Garden, Culzean mixed media, collage  81x107cm 1979  

Art in Healthcare collection  

She logs her observations in beautiful and detailed studies, many of which can be viewed on her website.
Back to her studio, sometimes the process of transformation begins with the translation of her studies into print. Rae has been using printing to experiment with the image and with colours since her undergraduate days at Edinburgh College of Art. She uses her studies only as guides and does not aim to reproduce them in the finished artworks. Monotypes worked in the studio explore the original study, key variations forming the basis of future paintings.

Ballachulish I  monotype 87x70cm1985

Art in Healthcare collection

Barbara Rae is always challenging her painterly process through controlled layering of significant collage material and washes and through her search for inspiration which takes her to the margins of Europe, Africa or the United States. The sombre palette acquired during her formative years in Scotland changed completely during a trip to New Mexico in 1985 where the clear light revealed the intense colours that have recurred in her work ever since.

Spanish Window  lithograph 99x72cm 1992

Art in Healthcare collection

She often revisits the same locations and when I enquired if her trips followed a cyclical pattern, she replied:

“Now and then I return to old haunts because I know things will have altered. Paso del tiempo - time passes. Aspects of the historical artifact that first caught my attention can change radically, or in different light in a different season cause me to notice something new on it or around it.” (March 2013)

Time is as much a feature of Barbara Rae’s practice as the locations that inspire her. There is the time she spends researching and recording the alterations brought about by man and the passage of time. This slow cumulative pace is then punctured by the release of creative energy and the cathartic rituals of her painting process, itself a race against time. And let’s not forget that her paintings themselves reveal many archival layers that we, the viewers, can savour at a leisurely pace.


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

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The next blog will be a whirlwind look
at the history of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital
to mark its bicentenary

Credits

With thanks to Barbara Rae for her comments.

‘”It’s chance, but it’s controlled chance”: An Interview with Barbara Rae’ by Andrew Lambirth, in Barbara Rae, published by Lund Humphries in 2008.

Links

Barbara Rae  http://www.barbararae.com/ 

Royal Academy of Arts http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/

Art in Healthcare University Student Friends

An assumption some people make is that students spend their spare time partying. Or not, in the case of the members of one particular Edinburgh University society as I found out when I met their president Sarah Johnston who explained how the Art in Healthcare University Student Friends organise a variety of activities in care homes for the elderly, in play schemes for teenagers and in schools.

AiH University Student Friends painting a mural in a school playground

Sarah tells me that although the society has only been running for three years, they already have sixty members who come from very diverse departments, Medicine, Engineering, English, Law, History of Art to name just a few.

What draws them in?

Art for one thing. Some members took art at school but had to drop it, so now they can enjoy doing it through the society, says Sarah.

Art in Healthcare helps by giving them some guidance and ideas for workshops but art practice in itself is not an essential requirement, enthusiasm and a willingness to try amply compensates for any lack of skills. What is far more important is enjoying working with people.

artworks with care home residents

Every Wednesday the society visits Lennox House, a care home in Edinburgh. They go as a group and offer a one on one experience to the elderly residents who, for one hour, engage in topical art projects such as Christmas cards and a chat. It is not surprising that their sessions get the biggest turn out of all the workshops in the care home. And the feeling of satisfaction is mutual judging by these two volunteers' feedback:

"I have been inspired by the residents of Lennox House, who all have such vast catalogues of memories and experiences to share!"

“It was a really rewarding experience. I had a lot of fun! It’s nice to work on a project and see a smile on their faces afterwards.”

 

The society from time to time organises activities for the teenagers who attend the Star Youth Club in North Berwick. This service is very well received not only by the youngsters, but also by the staff who appreciate how much the children benefit from the creative activities the society offers. The young artists must have been thrilled when the Youth Club exhibited and sold some of their artworks at the Edinburgh Art Fair which helped raise funds for their play scheme.

making messy fireworks paintings

Other projects have included painting a mural to brighten up the neglected playground of Mannafields primary school in Edinburgh. The theme was Noah’s ark and the children were involved in the design of the animals during workshops led by the Society. It took the volunteers four days to complete the work.

As well as their regular weekly activities the society members also find the time to fundraise to cover their travel and materials costs. If any of you readers came to Art in Healthcare’s ‘Art from Art’ exhibition in February, you will remember those delicious and beautiful cupcakes!

the primary school completed mural

This overview of their activities is by no means all-inclusive, but it gives you some idea of the time and dedication the society invests in the local community. However their success does not rest only on their excellent organisation and management skills, it is also about the fun they get out of it and the enjoyment they give others.

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

Don't miss out on any of our forthcoming blog posts. Subscribe by email address at the "Follow us by Email" above right and receive notifications when we make a new entry.

Coming up next the 'Artist Uncovered' post on Barbara Rae.

 

Credits

With thanks to Sarah Johnston for all the information and to AiH University Student Friends for their comments.

All images courtesy of AiH University Student Friends.

Links

http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/society/Art-in-Healthcare/


 

Artist Uncovered: Kate Downie

Two large canvasses face each other in Kate Downie’s studio, their typically energetic and expressive marks awaiting her finishing touch before their exhibition this summer at the Royal Scottish Academy. One is a reconstructed view of Beijing where she did a residency in 2011, eagerly immersing herself in the street life of the city, and the other is a sweeping and empty landscape. Despite or rather because of the absence of human forms, the juxtaposition of the dark monolithic cityscape with the depopulated countryside is characteristic of Downie’s sensibility for the human condition.

Kate Downie in her studio

She recalls vividly deciding to be an artist at the age of five, she was better at drawing than reading, and credits her later outsider’s aesthetics to being uprooted, aged seven, by her British born parents from her native North Carolina to the North East coast of Scotland.

Another clear childhood memory is her first sighting of the Forth Rail Bridge from the train down to Edinburgh. The iconic structure is a particular favourite of hers. She once set up studio on Inchgarvie island, right under the bridge, in a structure made out of scaffolding poles . She has sailed under it and today she is thrilled at the thought of abseiling off it during the sponsored event organised by Art in Healthcare in May! Kate Downie’s enjoyment of life is evident and so is her inquiring mind as she sketches on her newly acquired iPad while we talk. Drawing is second nature to her.

The Concrete Hour, wall drawing, mixed media,

Where, Where Artspace, Beijing

Image courtesy of the artist

This residency on the island led to a wall installation in the Round Room of the Talbot Rice Gallery. Performances and wall drawings occupy a special place in her practice. She adds almost with a pinch of regret that in different circumstances she would have been a graffiti artist. While in Beijing, she drew a cityscape, ‘The Concrete Hour’, on the walls of the gallery dominated by flyovers where she was based and punctuated her charcoal drawing with marks made with bicycle tyres and shoes. She is looking forward to doing a performative drawing this summer in the Kelly Gallery in Glasgow which, incidentally, is only a ten minutes walk from the city’s own Chinatown, itself situated under the M8 motorway as it slices through Glasgow.

Kate Downie has more than a penchant for the liminal and the transgressive. Coastlines, crossroads, flyovers, bridges, the gaps in between, all are transient spaces that she actively seeks out and celebrates with Romantic sensitivity.

Leidseplein (Night Travels), monoprint, 63 x 74cm

Art in Healthcare Collection

Her drawings and paintings are not simply triggered by visual stimuli here and there, they come from deep within. They are conceptual portraits. Each has its own place among the others and can take anything between a few weeks and several months to gestate. Her compositions emphasize the space around objects or ‘negative space’, a term she regards as a misnomer because these optical reversals bring about new awareness for our surroundings.

She mentions Rachel Whiteread’s ‘House’ where that artist created an inside-out domestic space by casting the whole interior of a house. Like Downie’s works, Whiteread’s sculptures are about the memory of the people who inhabited the space but unlike Whiteread, Downie invites, urges us the viewers to step in and complete her drawings and paintings.

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

See http://youtu.be/AdUojSKW4fo for short video of Kate's Downie interview!

Credits

Thank you to Kate Downie for her time and input and for her warm welcome.

Links

To find out about Kate Downie's abseil fundraising event for Art in Healthcare, go to http://www.justgiving.com/katedownie1

Kate Downie’s website and online gallery http://www.katedownie.com/gallery.php 

The Royal Scottish Academy http://www.royalscottishacademy.org/ where her exhibition ‘Walk through a resonant landscape’ will run from August to October 2013

The Royal Glasgow Institute Kelly Gallery http://www.royalglasgowinstitute.org/ where she will install and perform this summer.

Where Where Art Space, Beijing http://www.wherewhereproject.com/index.html   

The Forth Rail Bridge http://www.forthbridges.org.uk/railbridgemain.htm 

The Talbot Rice Gallery http://www.ed.ac.uk/about/museums-galleries/talbot-rice 

Rachel Whiteread’s ‘House’ http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2012/07/house-rachel-whiteread-art-victorian-home-193-grove-road-london/ 

Interning for the voluntary sector

Last Friday, Art in Healthcare (AiH) opened 'Art from Art', an exhibition of works created during artist-led workshops in care settings across Edinburgh. Such a project takes much time to set up, a challenging task for a small organisation run by part-time staff and beyond their dedicated volunteers’ call of duty. 

Opening of 'Art from Art' exhibition in the Whitespace gallery

image courtesy of AiH

How did AiH manage to pull this off? 

Outreach Manager Amelia Calvert explains that they have been very fortunate to benefit from the assistance of four interns over these past few months. Each one works closely with a permanent member of staff on specific tasks and areas selected to match their requirements and interests, curating, publicity, IT, administration, art therapy. The four interns follow three very different internship models. 

The two unpaid students from Edinburgh University Art History department come to the office once a week and their placement is an integral and assessed part of their postgraduate art degree. 
The Scottish-based intern was recruited by Community Jobs Scotland, a programme that places young jobseekers into full-time paid employment with non-profit organisations and the graduate from Spain is on a full-time paid European internship programme. 

Edinburgh University students  

Urara and Hayley curating artworks

image courtesy of AiH

How does it all work out? 
“The interns come to the office on a regular basis” says Amelia “they can be assigned specific tasks to be completed over a long period of time. In this way they are more like members of staff than volunteers. Also, they all have in common an inclination to build up skills and experience that might aid their studies and/or future job applications. For this reason, we aim to give them projects that they can ‘get their teeth stuck into’ and call their own. We fully rely on them as if members of staff so that they can appreciate what it’s like to be committed to work for an organisation." 

What about the time AiH has to invest in training these new recruits? 
“Granted it takes time and energy to train them and oversee their work” Amelia continues “but we generally find this is worthwhile for the input that they give back to us.” 

'Art from Art' exhibition display

image courtesy of AiH

A win-win situation 
The feedback from the interns is equally positive and reflects the adjustments each has had to make and what they gained in the process. “I am hoping to gain a general understanding of how a small arts-based organisation works – which I think I am!” says Hayley Thomson. “My responsibilities within the team have extended to a wider range of activities than I had expected, but I enjoy it a lot... I think I definitely have improved my communication skills... My time at AiH has broadened my understanding and interpretation of art and its impact on society.” says Urara Hatano. 

Amelia concludes “Furthermore, we feel we are helping to launch the career of keen young workers, which is the least we can do in a society where jobs and ‘having something to do’ is not always easy to come by...”

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

Credits
With thanks to Amelia Calvert, AiH Outreach Manager, Urara Hatano and Hayley Thompson for their contribution.

Links
European internships http://www.europe-internship.com/
Community Jobs Scotlandhttp://www.scvo.org.uk/training-employability/community-jobs-scotland/
History of Art, Edinburgh University http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/history-art

Artist Uncovered: Alastair Clark

Colour can provoke a powerful emotion in artists, Claude Monet called it an ‘obsession’, and it is this passion for colour that comes through first in printmaker Alastair Clark’s intense images.

Studio shot of work in progress
image courtesy of Alastair Clark

Glasgow born Clark graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in Drawing and Painting in 1990 and went on to specialise in printmaking. He is now Assistant Director of Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop where we meet early one morning before the start of his busy day.

  

He explains that his practice is about the transformative process of printmaking that gives him the freedom to edit images and experiment with tones and that unlike painting where every brushstroke is locked into an unbreakable sequence, printmaking allows him to go back a step or two or more to introduce a different hue or a different perspective.

It is the energy and the beauty of the forces of nature that inspire Clark. Working from satellite image sequences, he takes on those great swirls that permeate our everyday consciousness and shock us with their power for destruction and step by step constructs series of images which although still recognisable are now essentially abstract.

If you get close enough you will notice subtle and deliberate marks in pen
and pastel which are there to remind us that the artist retains manual control over the mechanical printing process.

Ammonite sky, lithograph, 30 x 84 cm
image courtesy of Alastair Clark

He describes his method in his website:

“The prints Longwave and Ammonite Sky were inspired by the Tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, their long shapes originating from weather satellite imagery which I stretched and enhanced until they reminded me of a wave, notably the Japanese printmaker Hiroshige’s famous wave, which also represented a Tsunami.”

Art in Healthcare owns three of Clark’s prints, including this two-part screenprint / lithograph entitled Red Sky at night where the close up view on the left enables us to observe a detail from the bigger picture. Clark often uses this diptych format as a device to provoke our curiosity. For him art and science share the same purpose which is to make us question the world around us.

Red Sky at night, screenprint/lithograph, 83 x 57 cm
Art in Healthcare collection

For the Skylight series Clark worked with the Aurora Borealis which he describes as an elusive mystical phenomenon that few are privileged to witness. 

Skylight 2, pigmented inkjet print, 58 x 42 cm
image courtesy of Alastair Clark

After a sighting in Edinburgh, he started by drawing on paper with pastel, he then scanned these drawings and combined them with digital images to reconstruct the display of pure energy he had experienced. With this process of altered reality, Clark certainly gives the series a multi faceted mythical perspective.

There is humour too as the skylight component is a reference to the small aperture near the magnetic poles through which the charged particles enter the earth atmosphere.

Borders and edges are of particular importance to printmakers and Clark’s more recent work plays around with this element. His 2011 ‘Skyshapes’ series, consists of assembled weather satellite scans printed on delineated MDF supports which seem to be floating off the wall. He is currently pushing this idea further still by meticulously creating fictitious islands constructed from pieces of Scottish islands. With these he intends to explore climatic change by showing the relationship between the land and the elements. 

Squall, laser cut archival inkjet print, 40 x 47 cm
image courtesy of Alastair Clark

 

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

Credits

Thank you to Alastair Clark for his time and for the use of his images.

Links

Alastair Clark's website http://www.aclark.org.uk/index.html

Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/ 

A busy year ahead

For the first blog this year, I asked Trevor Jones, Art in Healthcare director, what new projects we could look forward to in 2013.

Forthcoming exhibition

The first exciting event is an exhibition entitled 'Art from Art' in February of 120 artworks created in response to the AiH collection during artist-led workshops in various settings in and around Edinburgh. The November blog ‘Art in Healthcare Reaches Out’ showcased one of these workshops organised by Leo du Feu at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children. 'Art from Art' will open on Friday 8 February in the Whitespace Gallery in Edinburgh, for full details see AiH page on Facebook or contact  outreachmanager@artinhealthcare.org.uk

 Rainbow Owl by Joy, aged 11

Image courtesy of Leo du Feu

Art management

One of AiH services is to manage existing art collections on behalf of health organisations, such as for instance the vast NHS Lothian collection. AiH has now been appointed Art Coordinator for NHS Fife’s Glenwood Health Centre currently being refurbished and due to reopen later this year.

Glenwood Health Centre is situated in Glenrothes, a town that has been associated with art since its planning in the post-World War II years when it appointed its first town artist, David Harding, in 1968. This was a bold and progressive appointment and Harding worked with the architects from the design stage. 

David Harding, Henge, 1970, Glenrothes public art

Image courtesy of David Harding

Harding worked closely with the people of Glenrothes and his sculptural works along with those of the artists who followed him provide us today with great art walks all around the town. For more details, see the link to the Historic Scotland publication below. It is heartening to see this tradition being carried forward today and that art is part of the planning of the Health Centre rather than as an afterthought.

Acquisition from emerging artist

Trevor also tells me that, thanks to funding from the Hope Scott Trust, AiH will be able to purchase artworks from this year’s New Contemporaries exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. This exhibition, held in March, shows the works of some sixty artists, all recent graduates from the five art colleges in Scotland.

Heather Pugh, Going, Going, Gone, mixed media, 37 x 42 x 8.5 cm

Art in Healthcare Collection

Acquisition of artworks from emerging artists’ is an excellent way of keeping collections fresh. Last year, AiH purchased ten collage paintings by Heather Pugh who studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. She is featured in last May’s ‘Uncovered Artist’ blog which explains her practice and inspiration from everyday objects. Her colourful and intriguing collages are now brightening up the mood of patients, staff and visitors who walk along the corridors of the Royal Victoria Building at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh.

Expanding the online database

AiH are planning this year to photograph, label and make accessible to viewing online all the artworks from their own collection and from the NHS Lothian collection. Together these collections represent a remarkable resource of approximately 3,500 works spanning some 400 years, thousands of artists and a breathtaking variety of genres, styles and media.

This is going to be a busy year for Art in Healthcare. You can follow all their news and projects on Facebook.

Thank you for visiting this blog and may 2013 be all you wish it to be!

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

Credits

Thank you to Trevor Jones for his information
and to David Harding for providing the image of Henge, one of his Glenrothes artworks. 

Links

The Whitespace Gallery  http://www.whitespace11.com/

'David Harding Glenrothes Town Artist' http://www.davidharding.net/?page_id=37 
Historic Scotland 'Glenrothes Town Art' http://www.historic-scotland.gov.uk/glenrothestownart. 
The Royal Scottish Academy http://www.royalscottishacademy.org/pages/menu_page.asp
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

Artist Uncovered: Reinhard Behrens

The assemblage quietly catches your attention. As you get closer you begin to marvel at the expert drawing, at the 3D effect that raises the objects off the paper. Then you puzzle over the surreal juxtaposition of an old wooden spoon, the gnarled sole of a shoe, an undefined scrap of metal but also a carrot and an onion, all laid out formally below a quasi photographic drawing of an old house, standing empty in a barren landscape. You wonder at the story hinted at, you also wonder at the time and dedication invested by the artist on such mundane objects.



Carrots Onions and Rust coloured pencil 54x75cm
Art in Healthcare collection

This drawing and the other pencil and pastel works by Reinhard Behrens in the Art in Healthcare collection illustrate the artist’s talent as a storyteller, his predilection for commonplace rejects that his consummate drawing skills transform into works of art. They also refer to the German born artist’s early training as an archaeological draughtsman acquired during an excavation in Turkey one summer while studying at Hamburg College of Art. This trip far away from home was going to bring about the most defining moment in his life.

The Smith Sterling etching 89x70cm

Art in Healthcare collection

He tells us the story in his website, how while recovering from a sunstroke, he happened to notice in a local newspaper the account of a collision in the Bosphorus strait between a cargo ship and a submarine. The only word he could read on the page was the name of that ship NABOLAND. The submarine reminded him of the toy he had found on the North Sea coast the year before. On that feverish day, the coincidence of these events helped him evolve an extraordinary plan.  He would put all his artistic skills towards piecing together the existence of Naboland, the land of his imagination, through detailed accounts and documentation. This was 1975 and he is still pursuing this quest today.

Lochnagar pencil and pastel 74x104cm

Art in Healthcare collection

Behrens’ realistic style of drawing was inspired by one of his tutors in Hamburg, Rudolph Hausner, a prominent member of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism. This group, formed in the aftermath of WWII, used the techniques of the Old Masters to achieve lifelike resemblance. Contrary to Surrealist painters like René Magritte or Salvador Dalí, they did not privilege the irrational but rather sought to merge it with conscious imagery by adding fantastic elements into their paintings. The results are dreamlike scenes that evoke convincing alternative realities. They thought of their paintings not as escape from reality but more as therapeutic means that allow you to forget for a while the conflicts you experience and to return to reality feeling stronger for it.

Lochnagar II pencil and pastel 69x99cm

Art in Healthcare collection

In 1979 Behrens came to study at Edinburgh College of Art on a one-year scholarship. He spent some of that time eagerly exploring Scotland and joined the Mountaineering club in order to climb the Highland peaks in winter to get a feel of what Scott's Polar expeditions might have been like. And although his English was not fluent yet, he was nonetheless charmed by the local wit. He would bring these Romantic endeavours, Man against Nature, explorations of uncharted territories, and the humour back into his studio where they would fuse into his imaginary worlds populated by a plethora of discarded objects picked along the way, bones, feathers and other precious detritus, and of course by the yellow submarine, the magic talisman which made these travels possible.

San Gimignano, Nowhere to land  acrylic and oil  171x122cm

image courtesy of R Behrens

After settling down in Scotland in the early eighties, Behrens travelled around Europe and to Nepal and became also fascinated by the desert, possibly as a relief from the monochrome snow, all the time pushing further the boundaries of Naboland with his illusionistic paintings, drawings and installations into which he invests the same obsessive attention to details. His installations purport to be replicas of the huts or sledges used during polar explorations and amaze visitors not only by their air of authenticity but also by their uncanny reduced scale.

Hunters in the Snow (after Breugel) acrylic and oil 122x171cm

image courtesy of R Behrens

Similarly the insertion of the yellow submarine, made airborne when it suits the topography, in his breathtaking copies of Old Masters force the viewers to double take. Is this not what we expect of artists, to shake us out of our ‘normality’, to make us contemplate other possibilities? Behrens uses ambivalence, humour and gentle satire to great effect. He even reinvented the origins of golf in an installation exhibited in St Andrews itself, the alleged birthplace of the game. The catalogue, a work of art in its own right, is supposed to reveal the rules but the text is mostly illegible, although written in English, due to the tight German blackletter handwriting the artist used throughout!

‘The Origins of Golfing’ exhibition catalogue

image courtesy of R Behrens and Fife Contemporary Art and Craft

Behrens has lived in Pittenweem on the southern coast of Fife since 1986. He has been lecturing at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design since 1995. Last summer I visited his house which he opens to the public during the town’s annual Arts Festival. I was able to admire his paintings and drawings – as well as those of the other talented members of his family - and was delighted to find that his front room is dedicated to an installation reproducing the interior of the submarine. This is in fact the film set for a stop motion animation that has been occupying much of Behrens' time lately. This short film 'Naboland News' pretends to be a recently discovered news reel of the submarine's travels. It involves penguins, desert scenes and the Himalayas. The film will not be released for another couple of years but you can have a preview by going to http://www2.jpscotland.co.uk/artsblog/2009/08/naboland-movie.html. 

In the meantime, the film set - installation allows you an insight into the living conditions of early 20c explorers. The lighting alternates between lit areas and shadows and every tin, jar, old photograph and scrap of fabric looks absolutely genuine. The more you look the more you become enthralled and forget about what is going on outside.

Thank you Reinhard Behrens for sharing your world-s with us!

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

Credits

Thank you to Reinhard Behrens for his information and for the permission to use his images

and to Diana Sykes and Susan Davis of Fife Contemporary Art and Craft for providing me with the catalogue cover for 'The Origins of Golfing'.

Links

Naboland - the art of Reinhard Behrens http://www.naboland.co.uk/
Fife Contemporary Art and Craft http://www.fcac.co.uk/
Lochnagar http://www.scotclimb.org.uk/lochnagar.shtml
The Vienna School of Fantastic Realism http://www.telusplanet.net/public/ottorapp/page66.html
RF Scott http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Falcon_Scott
Pittenweem Arts Festival 2013 http://www.pittenweemartsfestival.co.uk/