DATE FOR THE DIARY...

Press Information from Tighnabruaich Gallery

                      

ANNETTE EDGAR & PAUL BENNETT

October 21 – Nov 13 

RENOWNED Scottish artist Annette Edgar brings a blast of heat, light and intense saturated colour to the west coast of Scotland when she exhibits for the first time at Argyll’s art haven, the Tighnabruaich Gallery, from October 21 until November 13.

Artist, writer and critic Jack McLean says of her work: ‘I know of no other Scottish painter whose paintings burn with such colour. You come away from an Annette Edgar exhibition with a suntan.’

The new work in this exhibition from Glasgow-based Annette has been heavily influenced by recent trips to Mauritius and Sardinia. 

Treedance, Mauritius (oil on board 76x86cm) by Annette Edgar, £2250 

Paul Bennett’s atmospheric, brooding seascapes – particularly of Scotland’s west coast – have garnered him a growing reputation. His work was recently featured in contemporary art book re Imagine while London-based patron and influential taste-maker, Samir Ceric, describes his seascapes as, ‘enchanting, provoking and brilliantly considered.’

Defiance 2 (oil on canvas, 92x92cm) by Paul Bennett, £750 

Tighanbruaich Gallery owner, Penny Graham-Weall, says of this show: ‘It’s a great pleasure and privilege for us to bring the work of two such different artists under one roof here in Argyll. They are at very different stages of their respective careers, but there is a real vigour and energy to both artists’ work.’

ABOUT TIGHNABRUAICH GALLERY

The gallery is situated in the heart of this beautiful village on the Kyles of Bute. A 90-minute drive from Glasgow, the Tig Gallery, as it is affectionately known, sells original paintings by Scottish artists and holds six exhibitions throughout the year, with occasional pop-up shows in Glasgow. The gallery also specialises in a range of glass, jewellery and sculpture by makers based all over Scotland.

Tighnabruaich Gallery, Argyll, PA21 2DR

01700 811681 and 07836 764993

www.tig-gallery.com

For further information or images, please contact: 

Penny Graham-Weall on penny@tig-gallery.com or call 07836 764993

Follow us on: https://www.facebook.com/tiggallery.art

and

https://twitter.com/#!/TigGallery

One idea to another

Covered in paint as I write - taking a break from the studio.  My walls are covered in wet paintings in which the figure has reappeared. I am on the journey of discovery as  one idea often opens up another and so leads to many surprises

Me in my studio - the paintings in the background were for an exhibition in Kelvingrove Art Gallery inspired by the new Riverside Museum on the River Clyde. One idea flowed into another, with unexpected results. Even for me!

NEW WORK ALERT...

I'm exhibiting new work next weekend at Tighnabruaich @ No 6 in Glasgow's west end.

This is a fantastic new venture almost on my doorstep and sees the Tighnabruaich Gallery bring their highly personable approach to selling original art to the big city. 

Bridget Sim is opening up the garden level apartment of her townhouse at 6 Princess Terrace, Glasgow, G12 9JW for the weekend and thereafter by appointment.

Tel: 0141 334 3800 or 01700 811681 for more details and/or an invite.

Back to the drawing board....

Beach bar, Mauritius (oil on linen 40 x 60cm) £890

Downtown, Sardinia  (oil on linen 40 x 50cm) £890 

Treedance, Mauritius (oil on board 76 x 86 cm) £2250 - a biggie!

Studio Wall

I'm busy in the studio today painting.

Some news is that I'm exhibiting work in a lovely new gallery in the west end of Glasgow called Tighnabruaich @ Number 6. It's located in the basement of 6 Princes Terrace in Hyndland and it opens on the weekend of 17/18 September. Thereafter by appointment by calling Bridget Sim on 07789 003126.

For more details see: www.tig-gallery.com/glasgow.php

In the meantime, here's a wee sample of my studio wall. A friend took it recently during a visit.

Studies on my studio wall

Portrait of the Artist

ARTIST PROFILE: ANNETTE EDGAR

By Jan Patience 

Published in The Herald Arts supplement, 13/12/08

Bee Dwellings by Annette Edgar 61x71 cm oil/linen 2011

AS IS the case with the best paintings, artists rarely know where the work is heading before it reaches the end point. It’s a bit like a conversation, or a friendship. Real life is seldom tidy. We are all seeking something perhaps without knowing what it is and, in-between times, stuff happens.

When Annette Edgar talks about her paintings, which blaze with colour, energy and depth, she brings up the conversational metaphor several times. “You never have a conversation on just the one level,” she says. “There is always something underlying. We may be saying amusing and witty things, yet underneath this is perhaps a underlying sadness.”

Although Edgar peppers our own conversation with references to her three young grandchildren, you sense that her own inner child is still trying to make sense of the complexities of the world through her vigorous abstract work or poetically charged, tightly structured landscapes. Her first memories of putting pen to paper and discovering the magic of creation, came many Christmases ago, when she was just four years old.

“My mother died when I was just four,” she explains. “My father had died when I was a baby, so I was left with my older siblings; all young adults. Whenever I asked for my mother, they said she had gone to heaven. That first Christmas after she died, I was given a lot of presents, probably as a way of trying to compensate. 

“One of the presents was a set of coloured pencils and crayons and I remember being just fascinated by making marks and patterns. I saw patterns everywhere; from the way droplets of rain would form on hedges to the grass rustling in the breeze. I used to draw pictures of going up to heaven, past the fluffy white clouds like sheep to see my mother.”

The little girl grew into a woman fascinated by the power of what she calls ‘mark making’. Her inherently poetic nature harnessed the power of a formal art school training to take that onto levels and places she is still investigating with vigour several decades on. 

Edgar worked in shops and offices and had two children before the muse that was always pushing her on, led her to take a higher in art in her late twenties. She was accepted for Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1980. There, she benefited hugely from the febrile atmosphere she found there, working with tutors such as Barbara Rae, James Robertson and Sandy Moffat. 

Since 1990, Edgar has painted full-time and there are distinct periods in her artistic life that echo her concerns of the time. Around 15 years ago, she became caught up about environmental issues and so the figure began to appear in a garden or lush landscape. When her friend, the writer and art critic Q. Gordon Smith died in 1997, she embarked on a series of ‘mourning paintings’.

Since then, the figure has been less prominent in her paintings, but recently, following a trip to the colour-spattered island of Mauritius earlier this year, there has been another slight shift in direction, with figures reappearing set against what she describes as the ‘music in the land’. Initially, her Mauritius work was an immediate joyful response to the vibrancy of the culture and the landscape she found there, but recently there has been a pulling back into more abstract paintings.

Edgar is a true painter in that she uses the medium fluidly and unashamedly. “Conceptual art has its place,” she says, “but painting does it for me. When I’m painting, I’m painting to work out how I feel. The ideas develop as I paint. My paintings are about life and celebrating life.”

Journeys and Pausing

"Sometimes she describes her work as a journey through life or the world. Perhaps the paintings could be thought of as a short pause in that journey"

Cyril Gerber, 2001 

During the summer months, I've been in and out of the studio in between a couple of holidays in Sardinia and Mallorca.

I always come back brimming with thoughts and ideas which inevitably find their way into my work.
About which, more at a later date...

In the meantime, the other day, I was looking out some old exhibition cards for someone who was interested in my work. She picked out a description (quoted above) in one of them which, 10 years on I still think applies to my painting.

It was for a solo exhibition with The Compass Gallery in Glasgow, called PLACES You Always Knew Were There.

Gallery owner, Cyril Gerber, talked to me a lot about my work in the run up to this show and his words on the invitation card were well chosen.

My Studio (where I don't tend to pause much... if I'm there, I'm busy!)

At Home ... with Me

I was featured in Scotland on Sunday's At Home magazine at the weekend. What do you think of the hair? (Click on this to peek inside...)

Henley's in The Herald...

I was chuffed last weekend to get a mention in The Herald newspaper's galleries page. Jan Patience included The Bohun Gallery's summer exhibition in the round-up of who's showing what and where. 

Summer Boathouse, oil on linen, 24"x24", currently on show at The Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames

Here's what Jan wrote about Bohun:

MANY small private galleries in the south of England exhibit work by leading Scottish painters and while these artists are not exactly prophets without honour in their own land, it’s clear that they are rated very highly by those responsible for the hanging.

The Bohun Gallery in Henley-on-Thames is one such gallery. Its associate director, Joanna Cartwright points out this year alone, they have had a show by George Donald, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham and Crawfurd Adamson.

Now, for their summer exhibition, they have brought together a clutch of fine Scottish artists, including Annette Edgar, Elizabeth Blackadder, Shona Barr, Marj Bond, James McDonald, Jennifer McRae and June Redfern.  They are in fine company, alongside the likes of Maggie Hambling, Mary Fedden and Julian Trevelyan. Fedden’s delightful oil painting Over the Sea to Skye reveals a mature artist whose creative fire shows no sign of dimming. 

Glasgow-based Annette Edgar is another mature artist who is making magic with a paintbrush lately. Her new work, such as Summer Boathouse, is ablaze with colour and purpose, as well as a poetic sense of place.

The Bohun Gallery’s mixed summer exhibition presents a rare opportunity to see such an well-regarded group of artists under one roof. With a wide variety of paintings, watercolours and prints produced over the last three decades in a range of genres, the exhibition offers a strong overview of some of the best of British art.

Gallery director Pat Jordan Evans says: “One of the pleasures of a show like this is the chance to experience the sheer range of approaches by British professional artists. The broad spectrum of work ensures that there is something here to appeal to every taste, which has made our summer exhibition a favourite with gallery regulars.”

Not so Still Life

My desk in the studio

My studio chair

A busy day at home - it's always a busy day at home and in my head - but I have a photographer and journalist coming this morning from Scotland on Sunday to do a piece on my house and studio.
Off to get the make-up on...

Rosann's Place

I always tell my friend Rosann that wherever she lives, be it Italy or Dennistoun, there is a feeling of 'Rosann's village' about it.

Rosann's Place, oil on linen, 61x71cm, £2750

This is my response to that phenomenon.
Rosann Cherubini is a talented sculptor and a really good friend. This painting is currently on show and for sale at the Catto Gallery on Hampstead.
To find out more see:
www.catto.co.uk

Clyde Connections

I was asked to contribute to Homes & Interiors Scotland magazine last year around the time The River Runs Through It exhibition took place in Glasgow's Kelvingrove.


The feature was called I Love This and the format is that someone is asked to talk about a place that they love and why.


I chose the River Clyde because it has flowed through my life in many ways. Here's what I wrote:

I love this...

The Riverside, Glasgow

Annette Edgar lives and works in her native Glasgow. She studied painting at Glasgow School of Art in the late 1970s and her distinctive brightly

coloured palette belies an underlying darkness. She is one of 25 artists exhibiting at Kelvingrove in Glasgow, from November 12 to January 30, 2011, as part of The River Runs Through It, a fundraising exhibition in aid of the Riverside Museum Appeal.


www.annetteedgar.net

Most classrooms in Glasgow in the 1950s and 1960s had a map of the River Clyde, so as a child I was always conscious of the river. It was everywhere you looked. 


The top deck of a bus was one of the best places to spot boats and cranes, which looked like prehistoric monsters moving slowly and silently in the sky. 


Grey was the predominant colour, and the weeping skies added a mournful quality to most days. Eventually, the sky would turn blue and the sun would shine silver and gold on the river, with the promise of excitement and possibilities.

When I was four, my Uncle Robert took me on to a ship he was working on. The boat was in dock; but, standing on the pier, looking at the height of the gangway, I was terrified. Once on board (wearing a sailor’s hat), I was enthralled. Unfamiliar smells and sounds abounded. Wet rope. Oil. Saltiness. Men shouting. Clashing and bashing. Horns sounding. Bells ringing. 


At that point, I fell in love with the Clyde.

Light reflections and shapes of the river and sea have been an ongoing inspiration in my painting. 


While I remember the Clyde as being silvery grey, I recall the people who worked at the yards being the same colour. They worked long and hard and got dirty in the process. 


Now, a new generation works in a different way in post-industrial Glasgow, but I hope there is room for continuation and possible expansion of shipbuilding.

Driving into Glasgow via the Kingston Bridge, it’s incredible to see the spread of changes that have occurred in the last few decades. It is – and always has been – a great river. 


When other things become a memory, it will still be there. It lives. �

The Riverside and Sundry Tributaries

Last year, I was asked to take part in a major exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow called The River Runs Through It.
It was organised by the artist Charles Jamieson and arts journalist Jan Patience. They asked around 30 artists at various stages of their respective careers to respond to the new transport museum being built on the site of the old Pointhouse shipyard on the banks of the Clyde.
This spectacular building designed by the famous architect Zaha Hadid, has been called 'Glasgow's Guggenheim' and it opens to the public on June 21.
Here's a selection of work which I made for The River Runs Through It.

Last Ferry

Clydeside Brightsparks

Fish 'n ships

River River

Hearts in Tangleweed

Take A Punt to Henley-on-Thames...

Summer Boathouse, oil on linen, 24X24in

Lerici Shore, oil on linen, 28X32in

I have just sent work down to Bohun Gallery in Henley-on-Thames for their Contemporary & Modern British Painting summer exhibition.
I'm in good company. They are showing work byMary Fedden, Julian Trevelyan, Jennifer McRae and Maggi Hambling, to name just a few.
The exhibition opens on June 14 and lasts until August 13.
www.bohungallery.co.uk