Siobhan McLaughlin studio blog

DRIVE! opens at the Richard Demarco Gallery

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:03:50 GMT

Since late 2024 I've been working with Papple Steading and the new Richard Demarco gallery, in rural East Lothian.

The gallery programme aims to celebrate the vibrant legacy of Richard Demarco through exhibitions and events of contemporary and modern art practices from across the UK and Europe.

Our first exhibition reflects the passion of Papple Steading's Director, George Mackintosh.

DRIVE! is group show combining archival materials from the Papple Collection with contemporary artists looking at the automotive theme in fresh ways. Since its inception, the automotive industry has encouraged invention and imagination to push the limits of what is possible. DRIVE! celebrates and interrogates this invention: the skill and precision of racing driver champions, the creativity of customisation and the energy and vitality of driving culture.

Positioning archival photographs with contemporary sculpture, painting and video works, DRIVE! looks afresh at the themes which encompass automotive culture.

Original photography of Jim Clark, son of a sheep farmer from Fife who went on to become an acclaimed Formula One world champion racing driver, will sit alongside painted symbols of speed and power in the work of Jaime Gili. Go!, a painting by Sam O’Donnell of the car as a domestic space for lightness will sit next to Waffle Burger’s Burning Car series looking at cars in gaming culture. Harriet Bowman’s doughnut rings of fused glass, residue from smashed car windows, swept from roadsides, are placed alongside Naomi Frears ’ films Cars and Girls , a kind of car park choreography film that celebrates different types of movement and the behaviour of women in cars. Becky Tyrell’s photography documenting banger racing culture in the SW of England will be displayed with Babalola Yusuf’s painterly investigation into the archetypal symbols of racing. Playful ceramic car multiples by Charlie Duck are positioned nose to tail in a traffic jam, while Toby Messenger’s life-size motorbike, a work born in part from nostalgia, leans in the middle of the space.

Re-defining the typical perspective of both the automotive industry and the rural farmstead, DRIVE! at Papple Steading encompasses the ethos behind the Porsche design philosophy. We are grateful for Porsche’ support and their values of innovation that are inherent in this exhibition hosted at a beautifully restored historic farm steading.

For more information and to see available works, head to the Papple Steading website here

The exhibition is open 27th March until 26th September 2026.

The Richard Demarco Gallery, Papple Steading

Haddington, East Lothian, EH41 4QD.

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Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:47:37 GMT

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Belongings: Siobhan McLaughlin, an essay by Martin Holman

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 10:25:19 GMT

I'm delighted to present Belongings, a piece by Martin Holman written in response to my show 'Pilgrimages' at Hweg gallery , Penzance 22nd November 2024 - 11th January 2025.

I'm really touched by Martin's insights, references and analysis of the work and hope you enjoy reading the text. Read time is roughly 10 - 15 minutes.

Thank you to Martin and to Joe at Hweg.

For images of the show, see my works page here .

Belongings

Siobhan McLaughlin’s Pilgrimage

By Martin Holman

‘If you aestheticise too much,’ says Siobhan McLaughlin, ‘you risk ignoring landscapes for their ecological, social and labour values.’ While toil is not the main subject of this artist’s work within the genre of landscape painting, the presence of labour is nonetheless a notable feature. She approaches the task of making imagery by realising in materiality her visual experiences of the external world. They become manifest through the acts of seeing, touching and being. McLaughlin describes her objective as creating non-traditional landscape painting. For her, that means deviating from the quintessentially British tendency to romanticise the ‘view’ or the ‘experience’ of nature. Because historically ‘landscape’ has been perceived in many instances as a visual salve. The result has been, and I imagine McLaughlin will agree, that notions of the ‘land’, as a product of constant movement by nature and man, has been lost – or, at best, downplayed.

By contrast, her images are constructed with an interrelationship of means. Material layers seem to correspond with physical sensations. We might recognise in the complex edges and surfaces of her work our own encounters with a dramatic natural environment. That experience is inevitably fractured and multidimensional, made up of air, land and sea and the visual tapestry of the piecemeal subdivisions. Mankind has parcelled land into fields and moors, and altered borders to suit changing needs and ownerships, so that echoes of previous patterns remain as vague imprints.

McLaughlin’s use of diverse media and varied techniques articulates that awareness of past employment. The tracery of seams and boundaries across the surface of Our Mount Joy (2024) appears random, highlighted in machine stitching embedded in parts of the picture plane. Subtle, raised ridges contrast with smooth and gritty areas, with boundaries between different materialities of facture and of fabric coupled by yarn to enclose raised plateaux that suggest awkward settlements.

The internal edges might be neat or frayed, even trailing a thread here and there. We know nature is not as neat as some preservation agencies would have it; it is not packaged for consumption but pre-exists the rambler’s momentary intervention. The jagged edged multiformity of Untitled (Callanish Standing Stones I) (2019) hangs loosely from a fixing

in the wall. It strangely resembles a hill climber, grappling the rough surface of the exposed stone it lies against. Colours project an imagined physicality as if the ensemble of textiles that comprise it are willing themselves into three-dimensionality.

As here, a painting’s perimeter can be loose, cockling a little under the effects of handling, coupling and episodes of embroidery. The artwork can appear casual, hung on a hook like a garment worn in the open air. At the same time, it is surprising: an unexpected sighting juxtaposed in the single installation of this show with Our Mount Joy. Suspended nearby, this time from the gallery ceiling, its expanse confronts the visitor. It dares a response and gradual absorption in its presence. Light draws out and even exaggerates its geography, strafing the surface unpredictably, throwing into relief granular areas of earthy colouring. And the length of it sways gently, unhurriedly, in the backdraft of visitors who enter, pass, circumvent and move on.

Sewing together multiple fragments of cloth into a surface to paint upon grew out of a student’s need for economy. Following her art studies at Edinburgh University, McLaughlin has discovered that divesting herself of the conventional support of canvas, wood or paper maybe anticipated her distinctive structural vocabulary. On the visual level, stitching

resembles drawing in thread and drawing is foundational to representation. So, it should be here as a reference, a touchstone, whether the lines represent or not. Are they paths or walls, features seen in landscape? McLaughlin’s landscape does not need that degree of dependence. Her work can relate directly or not: part of its essential multivalence is her choice to divulge or to withhold, transpose detail into a minor key in order not to overburden the viewer or complicate the encounter.

The provenance of the fabric pieces constitutes a layer in the construction. McLaughlin identifies herself with the contemporary necessity of sustainability, promoting reuse as well as the avoidance as far as possible of substances harmful to the environment. Although the total elimination of staples like oil and plastic media remains impracticable in current circumstances, reduction of an artist’s dependence is within her technical capabilities. She likes to ask for donations of textile offcuts.

Having been belongings, even of people McLaughlin never knew, the textiles forming the picture plane hold histories and personal memories of their own. Others trigger personal memories for the artist, like the curtains from her childhood bedroom, which her mother parted with at her daughter’s request. A fragment of blue blouse in Our Mount Joy binds sections of other gleanings, acquiring a transitory pictorial identity within the work’s landscape. Some remnants are saved from waste in the production process. Elsewhere, a piece of purple-grey cloth that, like all, plays a role in spatial organisation was once used in an installation at Tate St Ives.

McLaughlin does not go out of her way to itemise these origins: the onlooker might find out about this practice in a gallery note or be told explicitly by an invigilator or the artist herself. But the degree of information is not established, nor is it calibrated since, beyond general acknowledgement that she works in this way, access to details is not obligatory for her audience. The patches retain the jagged shapes of the original gift. As such, they tell their own story as well as support her impressions of landscape.

For the artist, the situation is quite different: the residue of personal and appropriated memories, sketched notations, ideas and emotions propels painting forward into a divergent conceptual space. Colour is penetrated by this process. Textiles import their own printed colour into the compositions also shaped by pigment derived from natural sources.

In recent work, she has made yellow from birch tree and discovered a variety of pigments in arctic flowers. Stones have colour and when rubbed together, the powder can be finely ground into a pigment. Oxide reds in paintings in this exhibition are distilled from richly tinted minerals unearthed by past mining around Geevor and Lelant. The tones vary with different media and predicting outcomes before drying is acquired through trial, error and knowledge.

Knowing the potential in plants to yield pigments is a product of the exchange of specialist knowledge. Converting these raw ingredients into a coloured solution for the brush is a technical skill involving the time-consuming effort of grinding into workable consistencies. Thus, all her works are tangibly made things. Triggered by specific experiences of nature, they nonetheless stress the part that production occupies in our lived experience of the world.

Art is one process amid many others in their creation; reflecting on that reality permits her to stand back from representation and underline that abstraction lies at the core of composing her imagery. The painted surface is a further layer, a loose geometry of colour shapes and textures derived from different modes of application, from laboriously grinding pigment into powder, from liquid to brush, pen to print, and from handling to sewing machine. Forms overlay the physical matter of the support without complying with the dividing lines within that substrate.

Place is crucial to her, but intuition and sensation are important, factors that combine the different levels of experience she wants her work to register. Walking was a family pastime she first integrated into her art making at Edinburgh School of Art, when ascending Arthur’s Seat, the ancient extinct volcano in the city centre, became a routine. How she perceives her environment on foot informs not just the content of her imagery but also how she puts it together. She has walked the dramatic terrain of the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland, the Orkney Islands and Penwith’s coast and moors, three spatial entities that have been distilled into the single expanse of Our Mount Joy.

McLaughlin likes to walk in the company of one other. Her choice of partner is partly determined by her location: in unknown territory she will seek out someone familiar with it. That person then shares a favourite route, contributing to the trail of exchange and connections. By these incidental means, movement is incorporated into a constructive process that is both physical and psychological.

Although based in Glasgow, McLaughlin’s affinity with Cornwall has developed through the formal connection initiated in 2022 by the award of a residency at Newlyn’s Anchor Studio by Visual Arts Scotland. That followed receiving the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Award soon after graduation in 2019, awarded by the Society of Scottish Artists and the trust established to promote the reputation of the eponymous Scottish painter.

Barns-Graham was an alumna of Edinburgh College of Art, training there in the 1930s. Travel was instrumental to the evolution of her visual language into a fluid, abstract interpretation of monumental forms experienced in nature. Her ideas were profoundly influenced by her native Fife coast and south-west Cornwall, two areas she continued to travel between for over 50 years before her death in 2004. The relevance of her example to McLaughlin, therefore, is obvious, and the significance, too, of Barns-Graham’s contemporary in St Ives, Peter Lanyon, also becomes apparent.

Nonetheless, perhaps the strongest agent in clarifying McLaughlin’s aims for her take on the landscape has come from outside the visual arts. Reading The Living Mountain , Nan Shepherd’s exquisite account of relationship with the Cairngorms through walking its high plateaux and rocky outcrops, conveyed the relationship between landscape and interpersonal experience. Shepherd was never overawed by her surroundings: absent from her descriptions is the self-negation associated with the romantic verse (and painting) on themes of the sublime that hung on into the last century. Instead, there is an attitude that has become the principle of ecology: that everything is connected to everything else.

Shepherd’s manuscript was written during the last years of the Second World War and those following. Finding no publisher at the time despite the author’s commercial success as a novelist, the book was eventually published in 1977, at which time Shepherd remarked that ‘I realise that the tale of my traffic with a mountain is as valid today as it was then. That it was a traffic of love is sufficiently clear; but love pursued with fervour is one of the roads to knowledge.’

In the troubled, uncertain world of its creation, Shepherd found peace in writing. That quality resonates with McLaughlin’s work and the time of its making. The painter relished following in the footsteps of this woman writer. She recognised in Shepherd’s words objectives similar to those she had set in her painting. We can detect a meditation on slowness – ‘a tale too slow for the impatience of our age,’ Shepherd wrote; stress on being rather than doing; and her expression of a vital connection with the natural world. McLaughlin endorses visually Shepherd’s observation that: ‘However often I walk on them, these hills hold astonishment for me. There is no getting accustomed to them... the whole wild enchantment, like a work of art is perpetually new.’

We know that the ground is not uniform: it has moved mightily in the past to settle for the time being in contours mounted on hidden strata of minerals. These contain assets that mankind has avidly extracted for centuries as if they were inexhaustible.

The familiar outline in the belly of Our Mount Joy recalls the Cornish mine wheel houses that remain in the landscape as relics of centuries of mining. Shafts sunk deep into the rock perforate the county. In that painting’s companion piece hanging in the body of the gallery, Standing stone/Oil Rig (2024), the structure embedded in the composition symbolises the extraction of petroleum and natural gas from rock formations beneath the seabed. Platforms have been a feature of North Sea excavation off Scotland’s east coast for 50 years. Cromarty Firth, where this composition was drawn, has become a kind of graveyard for decommissioned structures. McLaughlin conceives the platform’s shape through the deep lens of time, recognising in it an outline reminiscent of Lanyon Quoit, the neolithic dolmen, or stone megalith, 700 miles from the Scottish site in West Penwith. The fluid identity of this detail embodies the geographical span of the artist’s experiences for this series of work. As significant, however, is the allusion to layering land use and mineral extraction with mythology and woven textiles. In this way, she considers mending and care on a bodily scale.

For McLaughlin, walking took on special significance in 2017. A traffic accident in Edinburgh led to the protracted and painful recovery of her mobility. The mental toll has cast a longer shadow. Exertion still involves bodily discomfort in the studio, in everyday life and on long walks, her continuation with which have been markers on her personal road to wellbeing. A natural consequence, therefore, is to think about landscape in a somatic way, as a body, a site of exhilaration and hurt.

In the large-scale work Our Mount Joy, the assembled cloth is as tall as the artist and as wide as the span her outstretched arms can achieve before she feels pain. Shepherd had a similar preoccupation, which maybe seals the connection between the two women over many decades’ differences in their lives, when she wrote ‘One toils, into the hill’ and, in another passage, she describes ‘a tough bit of going’, phrases familiar to the rambler and to the creative individual. Walking, however, is never regarded as therapy; instead, it becomes ‘one of the roads to knowledge’ Shepherd mentions. Nor does stitching fabrics refer to physical and mental repair. Instead, her story joins others to be fused through skill back into nature.

The notion of a disembodied consciousness is not new and McLaughlin does claim it; she is consciously treading in a tradition and finding her own pace. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the leading academic proponent of existentialism and phenomenology in post-war France, proposed as much in 1945 in his ‘phenomenology of perception’. As relational beings who make sense of the world through gesture, patterns of movement and so forth, we experience the world as a bodily setting. In essence, we are in it and of it, we act in it and it acts in us. This idea corresponds with the knowledge Shepherd demonstrates. She seems to have anticipated Merleau-Ponty’s theory in purely practical terms although, coincidentally, the two were writing contemporaneously in very different locations.

The sense of what both were defining is felt in McLaughlin’s work. ‘You know who you are by being in relation to things,’ she says. Sensory perception has a fundamental role in our understanding of the world. The field notes of the great Scots-born American mountaineer, John Muir, speculated in the 1910s about the role played by the senses in human perceptions of the environment. McLaughlin’s outlook has that heritage. For her, experience of a location is registered by the eye, skin, tread and spirit. These include moving through valleys and hills, changes in weather and light; all need their graphic equivalents.

The body may be both subject and object, sensing and sensed within the landscape. Shepherd knew that: ‘A mountain has an inside’, she wrote. Posture, position and movement shape the internal response while the body among others constitutes the other. Perhaps a symbol of that in these paintings is the contrast between the colour and materials, which stimulate that sensual response, and the elevated position that her images invariably adopt, a bird’s-eye view that seems altogether ‘out of body’. Not surprisingly, Merleau-Ponty argued that reflecting on the world accounts for why we produce objects.

Topographies offer humans powerful allegories. John Muir adhered to a kind of nature mysticism, experiencing the ‘presence of the divine in nature’. McLaughlin admits that her own upbringing in a Catholic household has informed her world view. While she may not go as far as Muir, she gives form to thought on both material and spiritual levels in the open settings of her constructed paintings.

McLaughlin is aware, for instance, of the historical role of walking in demonstrations of belief as manifested in pilgrimages that occur in many faiths. Pilgrims often collect ‘contact relics’, objects of veneration that had touched a saint in life or death, enabling ordinary people to retain some link with a saint as intercessor in prayer or meditation. Encouraged in the

Middle Ages, the custom has never really died out.

McLaughlin was given a tiny fragment of cloth that had belonged to the grandmother who died before the artist was born. Its plain paper wrapping identified it as a contact relic of Brother André Bessette, a Canadian beatified by Pope John Paul II at a ceremony in Rome in 1982. (André was then canonised in 2010 and has a special significance for caregivers.) The survival of the dark dot of textile attests to its significance for this close relative.

Like the piece of blue blouse, the artist has incorporated the relic into a work of her own, one of three small, framed pieces that seem to encapsulate time, space and memory. Hung with it is her record of the accidental print of textile discovered by archaeologists on a shard of pottery found in Orkney that dates to the same Neolithic era as Cornwall’s Lanyon Quoit, more than 4000 years ago. The third is woven strips of cloth upon which the artist has collected rubbings of colour from plants and minerals as she followed the route, during her residencies in west Cornwall, and along St Michael’s Way.

The trail is punctuated by places where pilgrims stop, often signposted with markers. Such places coincide with an older tradition that associates water springs with pagan spirits that aid the living. Having failed to eliminate the superstition, the medieval Church recruited it to its purposes, rebranding the sites as Holy Wells. Cloth dipped in the water has continued to serve as keepsakes, infused for some with a mystical potency.

Cloth, then, can be imbued with the allegories that communities have for centuries invested in the land. It is this tradition that McLaughlin seems to invoke, creating images that might even be described as secular altarpieces to a body of knowledge that relates mankind to the planet through its own materials. As we live increasingly separate existences from the vital stuff of the world, McLaughlin cannot be more contemporary in her desire to reconnect us.

December 2024

Martin Holman is a Britis h art historian and writer on modern and contemporary visual art. He publishes regularly in exhibition catalogues and in the national and art press, most frequently in Art Monthly, Burlington Magazine and Sculpture. During his career, Martin Holman has worked at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and Camden Arts Centre, as an independent consultant, and in book publishing, printing and bookselling.

Quotes from Nan Shepherd’s ‘The Living Mountain’ come from the Canons edition, published in 2014 by Canongate, Edinburgh. The edition’s introduction by Robert Macfarlane is also acknowledged.

Siobhan McLaughlin 'Pilgrimages' 22nd November 2024 ~ 11th January 2025

Hweg Gallery, 34 Causewayhead, Penzance, Cornwall

Open Friday, Saturday, 10:00-16:00 and by appointment

Instagram: @_hweg_

Contact: equiries@hweg.co.uk

Glasgow cityscape commission

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 11:26:01 GMT

Fantastic to see this new commission installed at the Hazel Restaurant, part of AC by Marriot Hotel, Glasgow.

This 300x200cm painting combines earth pigments gathered around Glasgow, and some from the building site itself with remnant materials and recycled silk. The colour palette is taken from the rich materials of the interior and the natural pigment colour of stone, with a touch of hot pink nodding to the People Make Glasgow signage.

If you're around George Square in the centre of Glasgow, pop your head in to see the fantastic art collection of the AC by Marriot, who will be happy to show you around. Fine out more here .

Lyon & Turnbull's The Art Edit | 793

Sun, 23 Jun 2024 09:56:38 GMT

Delighted to have been asked by Lyon and Turnbull to select my Top Picks for the upcoming Art Edit 793 Auction.

Aimed at making the art market more accessible, The Art Edit series of auctions enables people to begin or grow their art collection, with estimates starting at £200. Recent lots have included works by Victoria Crowe, Dame Ethel Walker and Dame Laura Knight, and here I'll be highlighting my top 3 picks for the next auction , opening on Wednesday 26th June 2024.

TOP PICK: LOT 17 - Little Still Life by Barbara Balmer (SCOTTISH 1929-2017)

Watercolour, 23cm x 28.5cm

Estimate £300 - £500 + fees

I first wrote about Barbara Balmer's work for the publication A–L/M–Z: The Art Collection of Mrs Jay and W. Gordon Smith in 2021. Balmer was one of some 160 artists in the W. Gordon Smith Collection and I really enjoyed analysing her work. This Little Still Life holds the same distinctive quality and assured energy of her larger landscapes, with areas of flat space and chalky colour balanced with precise drawing skill. I love the mist-like veil covering Balmer's nuanced palette, and the powdered, ephemeral reflection of the jug on the table. There is a feeling of Hilma af Klint's work here, that magic mixed with the power of Georgia O'Keeffe flowers and the tonal subtlety of Morandi. There's a strength and a brightness in this little still life that draws me in, and that's why it's my top pick!

More info on the work on Lyon & Turnbull's website here

2nd PICK: LOT 129 - UNTITLED OG.4287 by Alan Davie (SCOTTISH 1920-2014)

Mixed media on printed paper, 20cm x 24cm, 2013

Estimate £300 - £500 + fees

This Alan Davie piece is an interesting one, painted over a works list or label sheet perhaps– something he did often towards the end of his life, drawing over names on old address book pages. I've been interested in Davie's work for a while, and curated an exhibition at Dovecot Studios to celebrate his centenary (2020, pandemic postponed until 2022). Alan Davie: Beginning of a far-off World brought together works from from each decade of his practice, from his graduation from Edinburgh College of Art in 1940 to drawings made just prior to his death. This mixed media piece, made in 2013, is a great demonstration of an artist in his 8th decade of making still compelled to make. At age 93, his work still evoked dynamic energy and creativity. The abstract marks are suggestive of symbols in previous works but the main energy of this painting has its roots in the spontaneity and openness of his early works. Beginning with dabs of paint and dry brushwork, only after the painting was finished, did Davie evaluate what he had produced.

More info on the work on Lyon & Turnbull's website here

3rd PICK: LOT 185- An Evening River Scene with Horses and Figure by David Murray (SCOTTISH 1849-1933)

Oil on canvas, 29.25cm x 44.5cm, 1883

Estimate £400 - £600 + fees

I have to admit, I wasn't aware of David Murray's work– he was a Royal Academician, a President of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours and in 1884 his work was purchased by the Tate Gallery. His work is praised for his beautiful drawing skills and delicate detail, but what has drawn me to this piece is the colour palette and the light. The reflection of sky on water, bouncing light across the landscape. Those gorgeous mauves and lavender-browns with flashes of the coral pink and orange of the setting sun, fighting the serene pale blues of the evening peace. The palette is captivating, evoking an evenings work and the passage of time yet also making us stand still, to gasp at the colour of the land. I just can't get over this vivid yet subdued colour palette. And with that, I'm off to the studio to paint!

More info on the work on Lyon & Turnbull's website here

Workshops

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 15:13:35 GMT

This blog post will act as a record of my favourite workshops that I've led or co-led in the arts.

All images are shared with consent of the participants.

"Our Shared Landscapes", Creative Hangouts , Glasgow, 2025

A collaborative paint, textile and writing project with children from Scotland and Taiwan. Looking at shared memories of our favourite landscapes and how nature connects us. The collaborative piece was displayed at the Briggait in Glasgow in April 2025.

At Pittenweem Art Festival 2023, I ran a series of workshops and demonstrations on making paint from the earth.

“Sense of place through symbols”, with WHALE Adult Art Group, Edinburgh in 2022. I ran this workshop during the Alan Davie: Beginning of a far-off World exhibition at Dovecot Studios, starting with an exhibition tour focusing on Davie’s interest in repeated symbols, jazz music and intuitive way of making.

Looking at images of Alan Davie’s Celtic Spirit rug made collaboratively at Dovecot Studios, each participant created symbols or signs that reminded them of home. These were symbols related to their culture, signs they walked past everyday, a childhood toy or a domestic object that held significance for them. The group were encouraged to think about scale, as these symbols were transferred onto a large collaborative drawing.

For the exhibition Scottish Landscapes: A New Generatio n , also at Dovecot Studios, I partnered with The Ripple Project to run workshops and tours looking at landscape and ecology. Reflecting on the work of the 10 contemporary artists in the exhibition, we experimented with earth pigments to create images of remembered landscapes.

In December 2021, I facilitated a workshop for young Climate Activists during COP-26 with Zero Carbon Campaign. The aim was to provide a space for youth activists and organisers to meet each other, exchange perspectives and reflect on the first few days of the conference through creativity. Thoughts and messages were drawn and painted onto patch-worked material I sourced from the Glasgow Circular Arts Network , to create banners for the strike/march the following day.

Gathering earth pigments

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Thu, 02 Feb 2023 16:32:02 GMT

During my residency in Cornwall, awarded by Visual Arts Scotland , Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust and Porthmeor Studios, I met artist Peter Ward . After seeing an interesting painting of his at the Tremenheere Gallery, Penzance, I contacted Ward to ask about the medium of 'earth pigments'. To my delight he offered to show me the best pigment collecting sites along the South West Coastal Path.

We walked at various points along the coast - Bottalack, Geevor, Gunwalloe and Levant - gathering earth and stone, always being mindful to take only what there is plenty off.

The run off from historic tin and copper mines has informed the colour of the land here, some of which contains the smallest element of arsenic.

Talking about painting with earth pigments compared to the colour of commercial oil paints, Pete says "it is more a holistic appreciation of material presence which encompasses not just colour but texture, smell and a provenance of time and place, of formation and decay, of ecology, history and Nature itself."

I love this tactile, material element of paint and was excited to learn the process.

After breaking up the stones and earth, we spent time grinding and sieving before mixing the powered pigments with mediums to create paint!

The range of colours was fascinating, and I'm looking forward to using more of these pigments now I'm back in my Glasgow studio. See this page for examples of paintings made using these pigments!

Letting go of imposter syndrome...

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Thu, 20 Oct 2022 14:13:46 GMT

Letting go of the imposter syndrome and accepting/celebrating the fact that I'm actually a curator.

Nearly 3.5k people visited the Alan Davie exhibition at Dovecot Studios . That's mad to me. Thanks so much to everyone who visited, I hope you enjoyed it!

A huge thank you to Dovecot for supporting my idea and giving me the opportunity to curate when I had no previous 'professional' experience. From approaching Dovecot with an exhibition plan in September 2019 to speaking at the exhibition opening in June 2022, I've learned a lot.

Thanks also to Edinburgh Art Festival , the William Grant Foundation and the John Ellerman Foundation for the support.

Photograph by Richard Dyson.

8 reasons to visit the Alan Davie Exhibition!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 09:21:36 GMT

Thank you to Edinburgh Art Festival for inviting me to speak at Art Late 2, streamed live from Jupiter Artland this week! It was a fantastic day of discussion, hearing from a range of artists, curators and creatives about their contributions to this years art festival. Watch the video below to hear my 8 reasons why everyone should visit the Alan Davie: Beginning of a Far-Off World exhibition at Dovecot Studios !

Alan Davie Exhibition Press!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 14:15:33 GMT

Alan Davie: Beginning of a far-off World opened at Dovecot Studios on 24th June 2022.

I'm delighted that the reception to the exhibition, which I've been working on since September 2019 has been very positive so far.

Jonathan Jones, a notoriously tough art critic, included the Davie exhibition in his 4 star review of the Edinburgh Art Festival for the Guardian!

Jones remarked that the exhibition confirms Davie as "an artist of biting power...who kept the flame of abstract art ablaze". It's fantastic that my aims for the exhibition and celebrating Davie's artistic life have come through.

Click to read the full article here- Jonathan Jones on Edinburgh Art Festival.

Jones has also mentioned my exhibition in the Guardian's The Week in Art on August 5th! In listing the top exhibitions he noted the show of 'Trenchant, memorable abstract paintings by Scotland’s answer to Jackson Pollock!

Duncan Macmillan gave the Alan Davie exhibition 4 stars in the Scotsman on Sunday! - Scotsman four star review

Susan Mansfield included the exhibition in her 'Six of the Best' exhibition reviews for ArtMagUK- ArtMag UK's article 'Six of the Best'

Jan Patience reviewed the exhibition for the Sunday Post as a 'must-see'! - Sunday Post article by Jan Patience

I'm also delighted that Art UK have published an article I have written on Davie's art practice. Read it here:

https://artuk.org/discover/stories/alan-davie-musicality-and-universal-connection

British Comedian, Director and Writer for the Guardian Stewart Lee visited the exhibition multiple times during his time at the Edinburgh Fringe.

I was delighted to see that he mentioned the Davie exhibition in his weekly newsletter as "an unprecedentedly thorough retrospective on the overlooked free-jazz/abstractionist Alan Davie..."

Lee also gave the "treasure trove" exhibition 5 stars in his roundup reviews of the festival!

Interview on BBC Radio Scotland!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 13:23:13 GMT

BBC Radio Scotland's Nicola Meighan and I had a chat about Alan Davie last week on the opening day of my exhibition Alan Davie: Beginning of a far-off World at Dovecot Studios.

I was delighted to speak with Nicola about Alan Davie's work and my thinking behind the exhibition. Over a cup of chamomile tea we chatted about how I first became interested in Davie's work, how it inspires my own practice as a painter and what can be expected from the exhibition.

Her enthusiasm for the show, and the range of talent across Davie's life was fantastic and I hope other visitors have similar reactions!.

Head to 1:12:15 to gain an insight into why we should celebrate the centenary of Scottish artist Alan Davie.

The full Afternoon Show recording will be available for 25 days on the BBC sounds website. For a recording of my segment about Alan Davie please see below or click the link here: https://youtu.be/iv4TOycJkZg

The exhibition is open at Dovecot Studios now until 24th September!

Click here to book tickets: https://dovecotstudios.com/programme/alan-davie-beginning-of-a-far-off-world

Artist-as-Gardener: Thoughts on artist-run spaces

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:09:32 GMT

Meeting a lot of artists recently, who have such varied practices, has made me reflect on an essay I wrote back in 2018 on the role of artists in artist-run spaces. Particularly, meeting an artist who is currently studying Horticulture, got me thinking about the idea of 'artist-as-gardener'.

I've just included a wee section of the essay here, which used EMBASSY Gallery in Edinburgh as a case-study, looking at the role of the artist in an artist-run space. In this section I was processing ideas of authorship and importance given to the 'Curator' title in contemporary discourse. Curatorial/artistic practice has developed significantly since I wrote this in 2018, but I think that the 'artist-as-gardener' idea is still a nice one.

"...Forgoing authorship, and therefore disrupting a ‘market fixated on the practice of individuals’, is inherent in the structure of the artist-run space, which rejects the capitalist hierarchical structures of established museums. It is also inherent in the nature of artist-run gallery committees as being artists themselves: one Embassy co-director explained that they ‘experienced so much joy making the show that [they] didn’t need the ownership…I’m not the author, the artists’ work is what the credits should focus on’. This absence of individual authorship can be used to analyse questions surrounding to what extent the artist performs that active role within the space of an artist-run gallery. Through interviews of Embassy co-directors, an alternative term to curator-as-author and artist-as-curator was proposed: artist-as-gardener. In relation to collective authorship, the ‘seeds sown’ by one artist are picked up by another within the committee until this collaborative curating becomes an interconnected vine of ideas. As an indicator of active art practice within the artist-run space, the artist-as-gardener model describes the process of the co-director artist sowing seeds of ideas from their own personal practice, growing them in collaboration with their invited artists, so that the exhibition is both presentation of artworks and a grown stem of artistic research. The complexity of both the role of the artist co-director and the relationships that they have with other artists is something unique to artist-run spaces. In the brief history of curatorial practice, the focus on the ‘dominant single-author model’ of curation has arguably inhibited the understanding of, and expansion of academic discussion on, these complex relations within artist-run spaces."

Sources for this essay section:

Ed Compson. “Artist-Curator in EMBASSY Gallery.” Interview by the author. Edinburgh College of Art, 06/03/18.

Fotiadi, Eva. "The Canon of the Author. on Individual and Shared Authorship in Exhibition Curating*." Journal of Art Historiography, 2014.

https://search.proquest.com/docview/1638900297?accountid=10673

Shah, Zarmeene. “Notes on Curating: The Curator as Mediator”. Art Now, 2017.

http://www.artnowpakistan.com/notes-on-curating-the-curator-as-mediator/

Stallabrass, Julian. High Art Lite : British Art in the 1990s. London: Verso, 1999.

Gilchrist Fisher Award 2022

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 13:57:44 GMT

In 2021 I was shortlisted for the Gilchrist Fisher Award and this month the exhibition opening finally took place. It was an honour to exhibit with 5 other shortlisted artists from nearly 200 applicants!

"The Gilchrist-Fisher Award was established in memory of Alasdair Gilchrist-Fisher, who died of cancer in December 1986 at the age of twenty-four. He was a remarkable young man whose wit, intelligence, enthusiasm and love of life won him many friends and presaged a great future. Soon after his illness was diagnosed he began a postgraduate art course, finding much joy in the discovery and exploration of landscape painting.

The Award was established in 1987 and is a biennial prize open to all artists under the age of 30 whose work explores the broad theme of Landscape. Previous winners of what the Financial Times has called ‘this remarkable and admirable’ prize include Peter Doig, Alasdair Wallace and Angela Hughes."

Huge thank you to everyone who came to Rebecca Hossack Art Galler y for the opening this week. It was a fantastic night and was lovely to meet the Gilchrist-Fisher family who had some kind words to say about my painting. Thank you also to Charlotte Call of Sapling Gallery , Curator Greta Caldera, and Caroline Boseley and Joséphine-May Bailey of Studio West Gallery for coming as my guests!

Please see below for a short video introducing my process and inspiration behind the work. I was shortlisted for the award for my large painting Glen Muick, view here , and went on to create this Mountain Pass painting specifically for the exhibition. I'm delighted with the results.

The painting will be on sale at the Rebecca Hossack gallery until 28th February.

A Pulling, Reflective Writing

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 13:02:09 GMT

During my Hospitalfield Residency in 2021, I start writing in my practice for the first time. I've written a lot for history of art, about other artist's work, about my practice but never as part of my practice.

Something about the location of Hospitalfield, the time and space to breath, the summer light, and the conversations had with other artists sparked something. I wrote three short texts that just came out without too much thinking. Well, not too much thinking in that moment. Really they were the outpouring of thoughts accumulated over the past few years. Thoughts that I had not given time to or felt able to express.

The result is a kind of reflective, poetic text that combines personal narrative with reflections on Nan Shepherd's writings in the Living Mountain.

Following a great crit with mentor artist Sekai Machache , I developed these written pieces into audio for a previous film work, Glen Muick (A Pulling) for the Landscape in Lockdown Commission from the Tate's British Art Network.

I'm just at the start of integrating reflective writing into my painting practice. Perhaps it will remain separate, or thoughts might be combined with sewn materials. It's definitely something to explore further...

Artist takeover on Clovermill Artist Residency instagram

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 12:03:22 GMT

Clovermill Artist Residency has asked me this week to 'takeover' their instagram feed!

Clovermill is a studio & exhibition space located on the grounds of an old water windmill in The Netherlands. They offer opportunities to collaborate and support the work of emerging to mid-career female artists and curators.

I was delighted that Jennifer Smith , Irish Artist and Founder of Clovermill, asked me to show my work on their social media. I'll be introducing my practice starting from graduation and working up to my current paintings. Below you can see early paintings in my garage studio.

Head over to the Clovermill instagram page to see the latest posts!

Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 21:02:02 GMT

The Society of Scottish Artists 123rd Annual Exhibition is open 1st-23rd November 2021 at the Royal Scottish Academy.

Showcasing works by members of Scotland’s largest artist-led organisation, the exhibition will show some of the most exciting work being made by the Society’s members and other selected artists, as well as bringing powerful international work to audiences in Edinburgh.

My painting Untitled (Overlooking Loch Muick) is on display alongside a Helen Morley painting. In the 30 X 30 Members Selection I have two smaller paintings, one recalling my time in Venice in 2017 and another of the Cairngorms.

Works list:

Untitled (Overlooking Loch Muick) , Oil paint, oil pastel and encaustic medium on mixed materials, 183x125cm. £2,700. (above)

Recollection (Venice), Pencil and oil paint on printed and mixed materials, 22x22cm, £190. (Below left)

Cairngorm Mountain Pass II, Pencil and oil paint on mixed materials, 27x26cm, £250. (Below right)

If you're unable to travel to Edinburgh to view this fantastic exhibition, you can find a virtual tour on the Society's website here . Or watch the video below to see my painting Overlooking Loch Muick on display.

BAN Commissioned film update

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 13:35:46 GMT

Reflective writing has slowly become part of my practice as an addition to my paintings. During my residency at Hospitalfield, I wrote three texts that I've adapted into an audio work for my film Glen Muick (A Pulling) for the Landscape in Lockdown Commission from the Tate's British Art Network. A fantastic crit with Sekai Machache helped me process my thoughts on how text could become part of my work.

Reflecting on my own experiences of walking into the hills, and looking at Nan Shepherd's writings of the same walks in The Living Mountain has added a new dimension to my work.

The film features my five-panel painting, Glen Muick, Oil bar and oil paint on mixed materials, 130x650cm and can be viewed through this link .

Reflecting on an Unquiet Landscape

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Thu, 26 Aug 2021 14:18:50 GMT

Reflecting on Christopher Neve's introductory writings in Unquiet Landscape: Places and Ideas in 20th-Century British Painting.

Joan Eardley, Winter Sea , 1958 and Paul Nash, Landscape of the Vernal Equinox , 1944.

(Glad to see a sub-chapter dedicated to Eardley's Scottish seascapes!)

British Painting in Neve's introductory writing references only English landscapes, his aim to "discuss some of the ideas that English landscape may have given rise to...".

Quite a reductive definition of British Painting, considering the many contributions of artists across Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. I guess this viewpoint is to be expected of the original publication date of 1990, although since the art world's progression away from an English or London-centric viewpoint I'm surprised that this 2020 edited edition didn't address it's conflation of British Painting as meaning English.

Putting this aside, Neve's introductory The Landscape as Emotion is a great entry into thinking about landscape painting. He talks about "thinking in paint", painting as a process of discovery and as "not just a way of seeing landscape but a state of mind". He writes with the understanding and sensitivity to nature of a painter, and with the sincerity of someone who respects the land.

Neve is right when he says that Landscape is often trivialised by people who see it as decor, as scenes or views to be simply replicated. I've come across this a lot as an abstract-landscape painter, requests to make the painting prettier or to represent more precisely what a hill looks like, rather than what it feels like. Landscape painting is about "what it is like to be in the world and in a particular condition", an evocation of personal experience rather than representation. You cannot go into the landscape neutrally, instead you bring memories and experiences that inform how you navigate space. With twenty sub-chapters dedicated to different artists and ideas, I'm looking forward to reading what each of them may have brought to the landscape.

Keep up to date on Instagram

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 11:48:38 GMT

For regular updates and more detail on new works, studio developments and exhibitions follow @siobhanmclaughlinstudio on instagram! There, I'll post works in progress, new ideas, reference images and exhibition updates as well as everyday activities and inspiration on the Stories function.

For a summary of recent news and information, please sign up to my quarterly newsletter below:

Walking with no destination

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Sun, 25 Jul 2021 13:53:24 GMT

"Often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination...but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him."

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain.

Shepherd speaks so eloquently and truthfully about the mountain and her experience of it and it has been a joy to read her writings while walking in the Cairngorms.

Just before my Hospitalfield Graduate Residency I visited the Cairngorms, with no destination in mind other than to be close to them again. I did not want to 'conquer' the munro (how would it be possible to conquer something so naturally magnificent and immense?) but instead explored the path from the Glen Doll car park, wherever it took us. Walking without the climatic goal of reaching the top allowed much more appreciation of the landscape, the varying textures and forms of the thick forest, mossy mounds and tumbling piles of granite.

Walking without a particular destination in mind also mean that when the path opened up to Corrie Fee of Glen Clova, the view took me by complete surprise. Emerging from the thick forest, the landscape unfolds and opens up into a vast amphitheatre. Expansive and breathtaking. We didn't need to struggle up to extraordinary heights, or show that we could scramble up steep rocky sides of the Glen, instead we spent time in this vast space and were grateful.

Cairngorms residency!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Sun, 09 May 2021 19:53:42 GMT

In April 2021 I was invited to Feshiebridge in the Cairngorms, for a week-long residency. It was a welcome relief from the lockdown days in Glasgow, and resulted in many new drawings as I discovered different landscapes.

Following one of the walks described in Nan Shepherd's book, The Living Mountain, I walked around and up towards Ben MacDui and onto Cairn Gorm itself. Seeing the munros in snow was a spectacular site, and has led to a very different colour palette: deep purple-blues of shadows, the yellow tinge of sun on the snow and the vibrancy of moss on granite.

The view of the Lairig Ghru mountain pass amazed me, and has sparked quite a few new paintings based on the drawings I made there. Looking down the steep side, it's interesting to know how crucial this mountain pass once was for transport of goods, livestock and people, and difficult to imagine those journeys taking place today.

Artist Support Pledge round two

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Mon, 08 Mar 2021 17:33:33 GMT

Back in May 2020, I took part in the Artist Support Pledge, which allowed me to sell older works that I would not normally sell through a gallery. This time round, I'm selling a new series of drawings through the scheme.

The Artist Support Pledge scheme was started by artist Matthew Burrows in an attempt to combat the strain on the arts caused by the pandemic.

He says:

The concept is a simple one. Artists post images of their work, on Instagram which they are willing to sell for no more than £200 each (not including shipping). Anyone can buy the work. Every time an artist reaches £1000 of sales, they pledge to spend £200 on another artist's work.'

These Lochnagar drawings are on sale for £60-70 on my shop page .

If you have any questions or would like to purchase one of the drawings, email me or use the contact form here .

VAS Bothy Project Residency Shortlist

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 18:32:03 GMT

Very pleased to have made the shortlist for the Visual Arts Scotland Bothy Project Residency.

From the VAS announcement:

"Visual Arts Scotland and Bothy Project are proud to be partnering to deliver this fantastic residency opportunity for an artist to stay for a week, fully funded at Sweeney's Bothy on Eigg. Our call out to VAS members to apply was met with a great number of brilliant applications and as we only had one residency place, we wanted to showcase the shortlisted ten artists who all submitted a high standard of applications. We were really excited by the breadth of experimentation and high quality output in this shortlist. It is unusual for us to showcase a shortlist but in these circumstances, we wanted to shine a light to celebrate these artists work."

Thank you to Visual Arts Scotland for promoting the work, I'm grateful to be included in the shortlist for this fantastic opportunity alongside other great artists!

Find a list of the ten shortlisted artists on the VAS website here .

Alan Davie: 100 years of Magic online event

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Sat, 06 Feb 2021 18:51:34 GMT

Thank you to all of those who tuned into Alan Davie- 100 years of Magic this week. It was a fantastic turn out, many more than expected, with lots of interesting questions and engagement throughout.

This was the first event of many surrounding the exhibition Alan Davie: Beginning of a Far-off World. Due to open in September 2020 to celebrate Davie's centenary, and then rescheduled for January-March 2021, the exhibition has unfortunately postponed due to Covid-19. Dovecot and I are cautiously optimistic that the exhibition will go ahead in Summer/Autumn 2021.

For the event I was joined 'in conversation' by academic and curator Andrew Patrizi o , who curated an Alan Davie retrospective at the McLellan Galleries, Glasgow, in 1992. Andrew shared his insights from working with Davie on this exhibition, and we spoke about the difference in curatorial approaches nearly 30 years on.

I've taken a slightly different approach to Andrew's chronological curation, instead I’ve paired works from across Davie’s practice that have strands of thought or gesture in common.

Above, Bubble Figure of 1954 and The Serpent's New Trick of 2010 are paired. Even though they were painted over 50 years apart, they both contain the same chaotic and metamorphic energy. Calligraphic marks and gestural brushwork from the 1950s is still seen in 2010 in the form of a snake, which in Jungian archetypal imagery (universal symbolism) represents intuition and transformation. This process of continual destruction and rebirth, in terms of Davie painting and repainting images is seen throughout his work.

Another important discussion was sparked by the imagery in some of Davie's other works. In 1971 Davie spent the winter in St. Lucia, in the Caribbean, where he discovered ancient petroglyphs.

Considering the history of colonialism and slavery in the Caribbean during British rule, it's important to question a British artist's use of this imagery.

An uncomfortable subject, no one has publicly challenged this idea in Davie's work, but I thought it was an important issue to discuss. Andrew Patrizio made a valid point that Davie’s work captures an important historical moment of being open to non-western sources, being innovative and quite adventurous. However, it's important to re-evaluate this interest considering the history of artists such as Picasso or Gauguin who were practising just before/at the same time as Davie and are now well known for cultural appropriation.

Unlike Gauguin, who exploited Tahitian imager y for its racial and sexual value from a colonialist perspective, Davie was genuinely interested in anthropology and was deeply respectful of the cultures he came across.

Davie noticed that the imagery and symbols of the ancient petroglyphs of the Carib Indians were common in different cultures such as American Indian and Aztec Art, Celtic art, ancient Egyptian, Greek and Chinese art. Ancient symbols found on opposite sides of the world had to be connected and to Davie this confirmed Jungian thinking about the collective unconscious and archetypal images. This demonstrated to Davie that symbols that appeared very specific to disparate cultures actually have universal meaning through the collective unconscious.

As written by Patrick Elliot: ‘They suggest a vast, cross-cultural, cross-temporal relationship of which we and artists are all part’.

It was an interesting discussion, and I am looking forward to more questions and challenges that will come from the exhibition and surrounding events when it finally opens.

Stay tuned on my social media and Dovecot Studios website for updates!

News: Mrs Jay & W. Gordon Smith book published!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 17:12:18 GMT

Exciting news that this publication celebrating the unique Mrs Jay & W. Gordon Smith Art Collection has been published!

I wrote short biographies for the 160 artists in their vibrant collection, whose work can be seen online in the current exhibition at Open Eye Gallery Edinburgh .

It was a pleasure to work on this project, researching and discovering works that I had not come across before, and delving into artists lives. The near 23,000 words I wrote for this book included biographical detail and visual analysis of the fantastic artwork on show at the Open Eye Gallery .

From Alexander Moffat's introduction to the book:

'The Mrs Jay and W. Gordon Smith art collection is a unique culmination of a lifetimes work – a commitment to the arts spanning half a century and more of cultural change and artistic growth in Scotland. To call them collectors would only partly describe the extraordinary lives of Jay and W. Gordon Smith. W. Gordon Smith was also an art critic, author, dramatist, photographer and filmmaker known for his iconic televised arts programme by the BBC in Scotland including Scope and Spectrum. He later extensively wrote exhibition reviews for Scotland on Sunday and Visual Arts Scotland, in which he would strive to see the best in an artist’s work and seek out the intentions before making a judgment.

Their art collection was built up over a fifty year period, begun by Gordon in the 1960s and continued by Jay until 2019. The decision to purchase artworks were based on one simple principle – they both had to love the work and no matter how tempting, not to spend more than £1,000. All artworks were displayed in their home in Edinburgh and artists were invited to see their own but the work of their contemporaries as well.'

As Designer and Editor Sigrid Schmeisser noted, it was Jay’s strong view that the focus of the book should not be on themselves only, but on the artists. The book was created to appear as if it was Jay’s and W. Gordon’s own artists and artworks reference book – which could have found on their own bookshelf.

In addition to the art collection, Jay retrieved exhibition reviews from the 1990s, typewritten and neatly filed away in two folders labelled A–M and L–Z, a detail later used on the book spine as well. Varying in length and size, these carefully selected exhibition reviews and notes not only contextualise and complement the artworks and biographies very well, but also give further insight into their unique relationships with the artist over decades.

Image credits: Sigrid Schmeisser, Gridworks

The core colour scheme was chosen by Sigrid Schmeisser, who began the project with Jay in 2018, to reflect Jay & W. Gordon Smith’s taste- a rich yellow book cloth that echoes Craigie Aitchison's screenprint Indian Crucifixion , hung in their hallway.

The gorgeous 400-page publication, edited and designed by Schmeisser, Gridworks , is available to buy at the Open Eye Gallery. Proceeds of the sale will go towards supporting the Royal Scottish Academy residencies for Scotland Programme and bursaries at Leith School of Art . If you would like to purchase a copy of the book from the Trust directly, please contact me using this form .

The exhibition, and accompanying publication, was written about recently by Jan Patience for the Herald Magazine, linked here .

Update 20/08/21:

Exciting delivery in the post today, thanks to Sigrid and the Trust. It's a gorgeous book filled with a lot of information and great images. Still can't quite believe that the 23,000 words I wrote are now in print!

Amazingly, we've received the following awards for the publication:

Winner – TDC, TypeDirectorsClub New York, Communication Design, Winner

Bronze Award – European Design Award
Merit Award – ADC, Art Directors Club of New York
Shortlist (end result out of 21 books), Longlist (60) – Best German Book Awards
Shortlisted – D&AD Award

Congratulations to Sigrid of Gridworks Design for her fantastic design and management of the project.

News: Film still on the Tate website!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 17:02:48 GMT

Delighted that an image of my 20-foot-long painting Glen Muick is now up on the British Art Network section of the Tate website!

Thank you to Royal Academy of Arts Assistant Curator Helen Record for using it as the British Landscapes research group image!

The image is a still from my film Landscape in Lockdown/Glen Muick, which depicts the five-panel painting Glen Muick hanging between trees in the landscape. It's just fantastic to see it with the Tate logo above, can't quite believe it!

The commissioned film responds to 'Landscape in Lockdown' with a contemplative recording of my painting Glen Muick .

Aiming to counteract the lack of physical connection in lockdown, I captured a more intimate experience of landscape, closely filming the drawn and sewn lines of the canvases in a dreamscape-like installation. Filming this way evokes the textures and tangibility of the landscape in a more immersive way than photography. The film is not perfected and glossy, instead it embraces the honesty of the painting and the experience of walking. The exposed frayed edges of fabric, loose threads and prominent brush marks lay bare the construction of the painting, asking the viewer to contemplate the process of labour.

Another aspect of this film is the intention of slowing down, appreciating what’s around us. The audio of gently echoing footsteps transports the viewer to the hillside, and there is a feeling of growing proximity to the landscape and more freedom as lockdown comes closer to ending. The film cuts to hills just outside of Glasgow, and as the camera pans round we see the paintings unraveled from the installation, celebrated in the landscape.

If you would like to view the 2 minute film, you can find the link here.

Yaa Addae, Thoughts on Decolonising the art world

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 17:40:33 GMT

I've been listening to the Art History Babes Podcast recently and found a fantastic episode with artist writer, curator, and organiser of the platform Decolonize the Art World , Yaa Addae.

The conversation about the usefulness of institutional critique when the institutions themselves are inherently problematic struck me, and started me thinking about how the Tate's British Art Network (BAN) Emerging Curators Group could reflect on this.

With the increasing visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement in the past year, institutions in the art world have responded in different ways. Some promoted black squares on social media, voiced support and solidarity with the movement and others promised to increase the percentage of people of colour in their workforce.

Yaa Addae asks whether simply increasing the number of POC bodies in these spaces really makes a difference when the institutions exist in a system which is inherently colonial and inherently racist? The British Museum said in a statement from Director Hartwig Fischer: "We will work to diversify our own staff" and "We will broaden the diversity of voices present in the interpretation of objects in the collection". But how does this work when many objects in the museum were taken from the hands of people of colour as spoils of war in the colonial era?

As Addae said, "Inclusion is really something that is decades behind us, that's what my ancestors were fighting for. Now it's time to start fighting for overhaul." She echoes Audre Lorde's words "For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house".

Perhaps this is a time for thinking about alternative institutions, moving away from these large establishments as the cultural signifiers and leaders, and looking towards other forms of groups that have race, class and other significant issues as their foundation.

As part of the BAN Emerging Curators Group, jointly run by the Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre, each of the 15 curators selected from across the UK will undertake a research project. For my project, I'm hoping to facilitate a real learning opportunity, resulting in conversation, debate and reflection. In collaboration with Clare Gormley, Head of Programmes & Partnerships at Belfast Photo Festival, we are aiming to investigate non-hierarchical, anti-racist, feminist-thinking models as alternatives to art institutions.

This is just the initial idea for the project, which will develop and progress as Clare and I work together. Throughout this time, I'll be reflecting on the inspiring and insightful words of Yaa Addae: Now it's time to start fighting for overhaul.

Listen to the Art History Babes Podcast here: https://www.arthistorybabes.com/the-podcast

News: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Decade by Decade

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 20:42:18 GMT

I'm delighted to have been asked by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust to select a work to talk about for the 1950s, in their Decade by Decade Series .

For the 1950s, I selected work from Wilhelmina Barns-Graham's Glacier Serie s as some of the thinking behind the work really resonated with my own art practice. I also feel that this drawing demonstrates what was a real turning point in the development of Barns-Graham's career in terms of her move towards abstraction.

To give some background, in 1949 Barns-Graham went on holiday to Switzerland, where a trip to the Grindelwald Glacier was to shape her artistic practice for many years to come. She was fascinated by the layers and forms of ice and rock, the movement of the glacier as it melted and reformed and the contrasts of transparency and solidity, strong light and dark crevices.

But most importantly, to her the glacier was alive, it was breathing. She wanted to capture the physicality and awe of her experience rather than a simple snapshot of one moment in time.

There is a sense of landscape in Study for Large Shelf I , but it has been abstracted by multiple viewpoints and a focus on feeling rather than naturalism. The energetic lines make the drawing seem in flux, just as Barns-Graham would have experienced it as the sun moved across the ice changing shadows and shapes.

I selected this 1951 drawing, rather than the large paintings produced in this series, to demonstrate her skill and draughtsmanship and also how integral drawing was to her practice, both in-situ and back in the studio. I really resonated with this, as drawing in-situ whilst walking up munros in Scotland forms the basis for my own abstract landscape paintings. Reading Willie’s diary entries from her trip, talking about her excitement at the texture, form and colour of the glacier and how she wanted to capture the total experience feels like a shared manifesto between her practice and mine.

Barns-Graham was ahead of her time, both in her abstraction of landscape and her forming of this Trust. As well as celebrating her work, the Trust was established to help artists in the future. I’ve been lucky enough to benefit from this through the Society of Scottish Artists and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Award at the Royal Scottish Academy i n 2019, and I’ve used this award to develop a new body of work that further investigates my experience of landscape.

To want your legacy to support emerging artists in the future is an amazing thing, and I think she was truly a great artist.

Images courtesy of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Collection.

About my work: Gathering a new colour palette

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 17:44:03 GMT

Just outside Glasgow, the new year has begun with heavy snow and brilliant sunlight.

I'm very lucky to have a beautiful walk like this just up the road from home, heading through forest towards the Campsies.

Whilst walking, I began to note unexpected rich colours that had disappeared in dark December. The treetops and hills were alight with rich oranges, blush tones and warm greens. I took lots of photographs along the walk, and began recording my new colour palette.

B ack in the studio, I picked out colours from the photos I took and compiled a colour palette. Although mediated through technology, I like that these colours have come from the landscape, at that particular moment. The sun and snow altered the colours of the hills as the day went on, and so each photograph captures colours unique to that moment.

I came across artist Vivien Martineau's work, Plant and Pigment , recently and am intrigued by her use of stones from beaches and valleys in the UK to create paint. This way the colours really do come from the land, and I hope to explore this type of pigment making myself at some point in 2021!

In the meantime, stay tuned for new paintings developing from the beautiful light of the winter sun on the Campsie Glen.

News: The Herald!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 12:31:39 GMT

My painting Glen Muick is at The Lemond Gallery, Bearsden! The Herald got wind of this and I'm very pleased to say, featured me on page 2 of the 5th December Herald edition!

Photograph by Martin Shields Photography.

The Lemond Gallery had these kind words to say about the work:

"Here at the Lemond Gallery, we got to live with the artwork for a few days.

The five panels stretch to 6.5 Metres wide and 1.3 Metres high. This piece would sit comfortably in any museum. When you sit down in front of it you get an immediate sense of it's vast scale and you become aware of how small you are in relation to the size of the mountains. You experience a curious sense of awe, a calmness and a reminder of the beauty (and power) of nature.

In doing so, the artist has successfully aligned her desired message with the viewer's experience!

Our thanks to freelance photographer Martin Shields for his photoshoot and to the Herald for giving one of the photoshoot images exposure on Page 2 today.

A very bright and thoughtful young artist who (in our view) has a very exciting artistic career ahead of her.

One to watch!"

On the 10th December 2020 at 6pm, I will be speaking about my thoughts behind making this painting in a British Art Network webinar via Zoom.

If you would like to join the webinar to hear more about the work, then please use the contact page or email me here to receive the link!

News: Update on my Tate's British Art Network Commission!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 10:31:34 GMT

After two months of hard work, I'm delighted that my five-panel painting 'Glen Muick' is finally complete! The painting features in my film commission 'Landscape in Lockdown' appearing soon via the British Art Network on the Tate website.

You can also view it on youtube here: https://youtu.be/7csgE5diD9U

During lockdown, when we were only allowed to leave the house for one hour, I found it difficult to connect to the landscape that usually inspires my work. This commission aims to bring the landscape closer, as I built an installation of paintings that create a space to contemplate the landscape and our place in it in these strange and worrying times.

The film begins with this intimate experience of landscape, looking closely at the lines and textures of the materials in my paintings. It then develops until the paintings are 'unravelled' in the landscape, hung between two trees and swinging in the wind.

This is a very exciting project, especially in association with the Tate, and I am delighted with their response to it.

Hel en Record , Curatorial Assistant at the Royal Academy of Arts said:

"I love the film, and the way it makes you slow down and appreciate the growing proximity to the landscape. The audio of footsteps is so effective at transporting us to the mountainside, and I also think the moody Glasgow weather just adds to the atmosphere, but also makes your paintings appear even more vibrant – reflecting your positivity and resilience in spite of the challenges of lockdown."

Due to COVID-19, the installation will not be visited in person. Instead, an experience of it will be filmed and shared across the British Art Network .

O n the 10th December 2020 at 6pm, I will be speaking about this work in a British Art Network webinar via Zoom. The event will be hosted by Emma Roodhouse, Curator with Colchester Borough Council, Helen Record, Curatorial Assistant RA, and Jenny Gaschke, Curator at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.

If you would like to join the webinar to hear more about the work, then please use the contact page or email me here to receive the link!

About my work: Hanging Series

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 21:19:02 GMT

The incorporation of materials into my works led me to align with the contemporary interest in a form of painting outwith the confines of the stretcher.

The stretcher does not become an aesthetic device in itself, but instead the lack of confinement expands the painting, the landscape is no longer framed but is free form.

Honesty

Untitled (Loch Muik) , above right, hangs from just three nails. It's made of thin polythene sheeting, linen and upholstery fabric and although it would blow away in the wind, it has weight. There is an honesty in its untethered form and in leaving the materials in their raw state, not covering up marks or errors but allowing them to be valid.

The untreated polythene sheeting with the expressive oil bar drawing meets the raw fabrics, balancing out the energy in the piece and giving the eye some space to rest.

The black tape, a product of practical storage, becomes a compositional device as it adds another layer to the painting. The tape on the front is a solid black graphic, yet behind the polythene it becomes a smudged line, like the shadow of rocks and people while you walk within the thick grey-white air of a cloud atop a mountain, when the visibility is murky and uncomfortable.

Vulnerability

While writing about artist Merlin James , critic John Yau said that vulnerability is ‘ a condition rarely seen in contemporary painting ’. I believe that this series of Lochnagar works fits into this ‘vulnerable materiality’.

An important distinction for me is that the difficulty and grappling within the painting process, does not ask for sympathy, but rather displays the strength that exists in that struggle.

Through the sensory experience of walking, translated into the physicality of large-scale painting, I explore an understanding of our fragile existence, and develop a deeper critical view of my place in the world.

Cut and hanging, these pieces embrace this vulnerability, some of the materials are so thin and puncturable, yet they are not treated lightly or preciously. The thin semi-transparent fibre material in the top left of the painting has been made solid, while loose threads are allowed to be loose.

The hanging of these pieces gives them space, like isolated islands, unrestrained.

The untethered lower section of the painting hangs limp, and unpainted, revealing the process of production.

News: Tate's British Art Network Commission!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 12:13:00 GMT

Excited to say that I have been awarded a commission from the Tate's British Art Network?!?

The commission is for an online work in response to 'Landscape in Lockdown'.

During lockdown, when we were only allowed to leave the house for one hour, I found it difficult to connect to the landscape that usually inspires my work. This commission will bring the landscape closer, as I build an installation of paintings that create a space to contemplate the landscape and our place in it in these strange and worrying times.

Due to COVID-19, the installation will not be visited in person. Instead, an experience of it will be filmed and shared across the British Art Network.

This is a very exciting project, especially in association with the Tate, and I am looking forward to getting started!

'The British Art Network is a Subject Specialist Network bringing together professionals working on British art including curators, researchers and academics, reflecting the combined strength of the UK’s public collections and curatorial expertise in this field.'

Scrovengi Chapel Visit

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 11:21:44 GMT

I just stumbled across a piece of writing I did for the Scotland + Venice Project about my visit to the beautiful Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.

In 2017 when I was working at Rachel Maclean's exhibition at the Venice Biennale, I took a trip to Padua with a couple of other artists to see Giotto's marvellous paintin g s :

Scrovengi Chapel

It seems odd to be traveling at speed by train, rather than boat, as we journey away from the buzzing canals of Venice towards the small mainland town of Padua. We booked our tickets days in advance, in anticipation of the excited tourists and fresco lovers making their pilgrimage alongside us.

We arrive early, all too eager, to see Giotto’s masterpieces that await us inside the Scrovegni Chapel, painted in 1305. My hands shake slightly, both from excitement and from my first ever Italian espresso. Calm down I think, I don’t want my increased heart rate and body temperature to mess up the microclimate inside the waiting room…

The fragility of the work inside the chapel means that visits are meticulously controlled. Groups of 25 people maximum visit for no longer than 30 minutes at pre-booked times. In an air-conditioned room we wait for 15 minutes, watching a film about Giotto and the Scrovegni family, until the ‘interior microclimate’ is stabilised. We are then directed into the chapel, and are told that we have exactly 15 minutes to experience.

The efficiency of this routine is fascinating, and the exclusivity of the visit makes it all the more exciting.

I worry that the images of the introductory film will dampen the amazement of my first glimpse of the chapel walls. But I am wrong. To say that I gasped seems a little dramatic, but I was in awe. With the other 24 visitors, I move wordlessly into the centre of the chapel, eyes glittering at what we are perceiving.

Every inch of space is covered in fresco. The chapel is quite small in comparison with others around the world, but it is taller than I expect and is densely packed.

Narratives of the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary are laid out in three layers across opposing walls. The narrative starts on the top register with scenes of Christ’s grandparents, and the Virgin Mary’s life. The bottom register displays narratives such as the Passion, and scenes immediately proceeding the Crucifixion. On the west wall, above the entranceway, is the striking Last Judgement; a subtle moral reminder to those exiting the chapel.

In between these narrative scenes, faux marble panels create a sense of the walls being inlaid with stone. These abstract patterns of marble stone are actually masterful paintings by Giotto.

I feel completely engulfed by images.

Judas Kissing Christ, one of the most famous scenes from the bible, was painted over 700 years ago yet there is still an unbearable suspense in the image. The buon or true fresco technique has bound pigment together with plaster so that the painting literally becomes part of the wall. The narratives therefore become truly part of this chapel, and part of the offering of the Scrovegni family in their attempt to repent for their sins.

In the era before linear perspective was discovered, Giotto created masterful scenes of naturalism and architectural space. Here I see an interest in the world, and the real physical space that humanity occupies.

The most striking section however is not the walls, but is above me. With head titled, I gaze up in wonder at the brilliant lapis lazuli blue saturating the ceiling. Dusted with golden stars, this is not a depiction of the sky or the deep blue of Venetian waters. This sweeping veil of blue, with portraits of Christ and other saints peeking out, is a depiction of heaven.

Through colour, Giotto creates the most sacred and simple expression of paradise.

With this idyllic thought in my head, our 15 minutes is up.

News: My Freelance Panel Discussion for ECA

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 16:56:50 GMT

https://www.degreeshow.eca.ed.ac.uk/2020/edinburgh-innovations-x-eca-conversation-experienced-freelancers

Huge thank you to Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh Innovations for inviting me to speak on this Freelance Panel Discussion!

As part of Degree Show 2020, Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh Innovations have produced a series of events to support students and recent graduates. Alongside Ana Betancourt from Black Goblin Audio and storyboard artist Matt Sinclair , I discussed the highs and lows of freelancing in the arts.

Below you can see me talking for 5 minutes about my experience of freelancing since graduating in July 2019. There were some great questions after this, about balancing life and work, how to approach galleries and what to expect from the different areas of freelancing.

For my contribution to the panel discussion, I talked about the three jobs I'm currently balancing and the things I wish I had realised when I started them. To see the full recording including q&a at the end, please follow this link. Here's a quick summary:

News: My Artist Talk for the Society of Scottish Artists

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 17:33:52 GMT

Huge thank you to the Society of Scottish Artists for inviting me to speak about my art practice this week!

I spoke about the development of my process, from walking and drawing to colour and material research. Nan Shepherd's writing in The Living Mountain has influenced this a lot: from her ideology that 'We should not walk up a mountain but into them, thus exploring ourselves as well as them’ to her comments on the glowing rose-red of the Lochnagar cliffs in the morning.

It was really lovely to see so many people interested in hearing about my work and there were some fantastic questions asked after. Lots to think about...especially how much I wave my hands around!

If you'd like to watch the full talk, click here

The talk was part of the SSA DIALOGUES Series:

'We are thrilled to begin our SSA Dialogues programme this month with a series of informal Meet the Members events. The four talks will provide a great opportunity to get to know some of our members better and to hear more about their practice. Each event will be held as a live Zoom call, opening up the discussion and allowing attendees to ask any burning questions at the end.'

News: Interview with Arusha Gallery!

siobhanmclaughlinstudio@gmail.com — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 10:20:47 GMT

Arusha Gallery interviewed me as part of their Exercise Three online exhibition, including how my process has changed since lockdown, what I'm reading and what makes me laugh!

Three of my works are available as part of this online exhibition:

Left to Right:

Exercise Three 2020, Oil pastel and pencil on paper, 20x14cm.

Exercise Three (Hanging Drawing I), Oil paint and fine liner on mixed materials, 15x21cm.

Exercise Three (Hanging Drawing II), Fine liner on mixed materials, 15x21cm.

Arusha Gallery say Exercise Three "sees artists answer a worksheet, with questions, ranging from superstitions and recipes to drawing prompts and favourite dance songs. Artists are invited to share a little bit about themselves and their practice, before being tasked with exercise three - an A5 drawing challenge.

Each completed worksheets will be uploaded onto our website every couple of days, along with their final drawing which will be available to purchase for £110."

Find the full interview, and see my work in the online exhibition at:

https://www.arushagallery.com/news/38-exercise-three-siobhan-mclaughlin/

About my work: Drawing on an expanded scale.

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 20:53:47 GMT

Moving the drawn line from sketching in situ, up a munro in the Cairngorms, to this expanded format gives a sense of vastness of the landscape.

Untitled (Polythene action drawing I), Acrylic paint on polythene sheeting, 310x200cm

For these drawings I used an alternative tool, a paintbrush on a dowel rod, to give physical distance between my body and the surface, and allow for a less controlled line to be expressed.

In painting, my experience is one that is viewed intimately, often with only a few inches between eyes and painted surface, or mixing pot. Whereas in these larger expressive drawings there is a physical distance, yet the process is still completely connected. The physicality of moving around the space, having to reach and bend to create marks, connects me to my subject matter and my experience.

These large drawings, in similar dimensions to my large painting, act both as works in their own right and as research tools for mapping out forms and determining compositions.

In a similar way to my drawing process, Brice Marden used long handled brushes to give himself a certain distance from the surface to create his paintings in his ‘Cold Mountain’ series of the mid 1980s. Influenced by Chinese calligraphy and Zen nature poems, Marden constructed an energetic and dynamic space from line. Marden’s evocation of nature through the reading of poetry, particularly the Cold Mountain poems by Han Shan of 700 AD, aligns with my research of looking back to Nan Shepherd’s poetic prose as inspiration.

Brice Marden, Cold Mountain 6 (Bridge), oil on linen, 274x365cm, 1989-1991.

Untitled (Polythene drawing III), Acrylic paint on polythene sheeting, 310x200cm.

News: Artist Support Pledge

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 16:39:33 GMT

News from the Siobhan McLaughlin Studio- I'm taking part in Artist Support Pledge! This scheme was started by artist Matthew Burrows in an attempt to combat the strain on the arts caused by the pandemic.

He says:

'Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many artists have found themselves without work, teaching, technical support and gallery work. Exhibitions and sales have disappeared. In an attempt to help alleviate some of this stress I have instigated the ARTIST SUPPORT PLEDGE #artistsupportpledge The concept is a simple one. Artists post images of their work, on Instagram which they are willing to sell for no more than £200 each (not including shipping). Anyone can buy the work. Every time an artist reaches £1000 of sales, they pledge to spend £200 on another artist's work.'

This scheme has allowed me to sell older work that I would not normally sell through a gallery. If you're interested in a piece, or have any questions about the works, please let me know!

For other available paintings, please head to the Shop page to see what's available!

Take care,

Siobhan

About my work: Walking and thinking

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 13:48:28 GMT

‘We should not walk up a mountain but into them, thus exploring ourselves as well as them’ 

Nan Shepherd (1893-1981), The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. 1977

The munro walk that my recent body of work focuses on, up and around Lochnagar in the Cairngorms, was written about by poet Nan Shepherd in her book The Living Mountain. Shepherd’s focus on accumulative experience rather than the peak goal as a way of exploring both our physical and mental capacities is something that I have been contemplating through my research. Walking as experiencing has also meant walking to create space for thought, a discursive space, a conscious space, a space that is mediated by personal circumstances and physical limitations. The repetitive nature of walking allows these thoughts to turn into rhythms and processes, understanding how we manoeuvre through the landscape and what that means in terms of a place in the world. You cannot go into the landscape neutrally, you bring experience with you and subsequently discover new ways of navigating space.

This primary, experiential research has led me to look into the history of walking, giving me an understanding of different notions of place, and how throughout history, walking has been used in defining personal identity.

The methodology of walking into the landscape has therefore been an intimate one. One that shares a past with female experience, in opposition to the climactic goal of male walking writers prevalent in Shepherd’s time, and one that has allowed me to confront my own, physical limitations. Slowing down physically, has allowed me to encounter the nuances of landscape and engage in a more complex, sustained experience.

I link this to Henri Bergson’s idea of experiential duration, which, in opposition to objective linear time, is a continuously evolving ‘inner duration’. In the experience of walking as research, a single moment in linear time is not captured but instead this accumulated research feeds into my paintings to create an unfolding image of experience.

News: Visit to Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Archives

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 21:53:46 GMT

In January I had the pleasure of going to visit the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Archives in Edinburgh with Barns-Graham Trust Director Rob Airey.

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham bequeathed to the Trust a significant collection of paintings, drawings and prints. This enables the Trust to present her work in a number of different contexts through exhibitions and facilitate long term loans to public galleries and museums.

Rob took me through the archive, showing paintings, prints and drawings from every decade of Barns-Graham's life. It was a fascinating insight into the range of work she created, and how each place she visited and lived had an impact on her style.

The library was extensive, and included a small box of collected clippings of Alan Davie's work!

During her lifetime Wilhelmina Barns-Graham accumulated a significant number of art books, magazines, private view cards, auction and exhibition catalogues. Holdings of material relating to herself, the wider St Ives group of artists and 20th century British art in general are particularly strong. Periodicals that are held in depth include Art Review, Modern Painters, Art International and Art Monthly. There is also other material that represents not only her broader interest in European Art from between 1940 and 1970, but also travel, cookery, history and biography. The Library also contains Barns-Graham’s photographic records of her work and her personal archive of photograph albums.

Header image: Scorpio Series 3, No.9, Acrylic on paper, 1997.

Below: Edinburgh Interior, Oil on hardboard, 1937. Displayed at SSA+VAS Open Exhibition, the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.

News: The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Award

Sun, 22 Dec 2019 21:53:47 GMT

Wanting to say a huge thank you to the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, I am absolutely delighted to have been given this award at the VAS + SSA Open Exhibition.

It was a complete surprise, and I'm very pleased. Find my work Untitled (Lochnagar III) here .

A wee section from the Barns-Graham Trust website about the award:

"The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Award recognises and celebrates a long association between the artist and the SSA. In 1935, while Barns-Graham was still studying for her Diploma at Edinburgh College of Art, the SSA offered her the first opportunity to exhibit in a public exhibition – a landscape in oils. She would continue to show in the annual exhibitions through the 1930s. While at ECA Barns-Graham also benefitted from the award of a number of scholarships and bursaries. It is particularly appropriate therefore that the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust should support a new £2,000 prize for an artist, while the 2019 Scottish Society of Artists Open exhibition is being held in Edinburgh.

The SSA is an artist-led organisation with over 1000 members from across Scotland and beyond. This year’s annual Open Exhibition is the second collaborative venture between the SSA and Visual Arts Scotland (VAS). The two organisations have joined forces once again, with one common vision and clarity of purpose, to create a combined annual show which they believe to be the very best in contemporary art and design." 

https://www.barns-grahamtrust.org.uk/The-Trust/News/News-108.html

The SSA|VAS OPEN is on at the Royal Scottish Academy, The Mound, Edinburgh between 22 December 2019 to 30 January 2020.

Siobhan McLaughlin studio blog

DRIVE! opens at the Richard Demarco Gallery

Latest news on Instagram

Belongings: Siobhan McLaughlin, an essay by Martin Holman

I'm delighted to present Belongings, a piece by Martin Holman written in response to my show 'Pilgrimages' at Hweg gallery , Penzance 22nd November 2024 - 11th January 2025.

I'm really touched by Martin's insights, references and analysis of the work and hope you enjoy reading the text. Read time is roughly 10 - 15 minutes.

Thank you to Martin and to Joe at Hweg.

For images of the show, see my works page here .

Glasgow cityscape commission

Fantastic to see this new commission installed at the Hazel Restaurant, part of AC by Marriot Hotel, Glasgow.

If you're around George Square in the centre of Glasgow, pop your head in to see the fantastic art collection of the AC by Marriot, who will be happy to show you around. Fine out more here .

Lyon & Turnbull's The Art Edit | 793

Delighted to have been asked by Lyon and Turnbull to select my Top Picks for the upcoming Art Edit 793 Auction.

Workshops

This blog post will act as a record of my favourite workshops that I've led or co-led in the arts.

All images are shared with consent of the participants.

﻿

Gathering earth pigments

Letting go of imposter syndrome...

8 reasons to visit the Alan Davie Exhibition!

Alan Davie Exhibition Press!

Alan Davie: Beginning of a far-off World opened at Dovecot Studios on 24th June 2022.

I'm delighted that the reception to the exhibition, which I've been working on since September 2019 has been very positive so far.

Interview on BBC Radio Scotland!

BBC Radio Scotland's Nicola Meighan and I had a chat about Alan Davie last week on the opening day of my exhibition Alan Davie: Beginning of a far-off World at Dovecot Studios.

Artist-as-Gardener: Thoughts on artist-run spaces

Meeting a lot of artists recently, who have such varied practices, has made me reflect on an essay I wrote back in 2018 on the role of artists in artist-run spaces. Particularly, meeting an artist who is currently studying Horticulture, got me thinking about the idea of 'artist-as-gardener'.

Gilchrist Fisher Award 2022

In 2021 I was shortlisted for the Gilchrist Fisher Award and this month the exhibition opening finally took place. It was an honour to exhibit with 5 other shortlisted artists from nearly 200 applicants!

A Pulling, Reflective Writing

During my Hospitalfield Residency in 2021, I start writing in my practice for the first time. I've written a lot for history of art, about other artist's work, about my practice but never as part of my practice.

The result is a kind of reflective, poetic text that combines personal narrative with reflections on Nan Shepherd's writings in the Living Mountain.

Following a great crit with mentor artist Sekai Machache , I developed these written pieces into audio for a previous film work, Glen Muick (A Pulling) for the Landscape in Lockdown Commission from the Tate's British Art Network.

I'm just at the start of integrating reflective writing into my painting practice. Perhaps it will remain separate, or thoughts might be combined with sewn materials. It's definitely something to explore further...

Artist takeover on Clovermill Artist Residency instagram

Clovermill Artist Residency has asked me this week to 'takeover' their instagram feed!

Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition

The Society of Scottish Artists 123rd Annual Exhibition is open 1st-23rd November 2021 at the Royal Scottish Academy.

Showcasing works by members of Scotland’s largest artist-led organisation, the exhibition will show some of the most exciting work being made by the Society’s members and other selected artists, as well as bringing powerful international work to audiences in Edinburgh.

BAN Commissioned film update

The film features my five-panel painting, Glen Muick, Oil bar and oil paint on mixed materials, 130x650cm and can be viewed through this link .

Reflecting on an Unquiet Landscape

Reflecting on Christopher Neve's introductory writings in Unquiet Landscape: Places and Ideas in 20th-Century British Painting.

Keep up to date on Instagram

Walking with no destination

Cairngorms residency!

In April 2021 I was invited to Feshiebridge in the Cairngorms, for a week-long residency. It was a welcome relief from the lockdown days in Glasgow, and resulted in many new drawings as I discovered different landscapes.

Artist Support Pledge round two

Back in May 2020, I took part in the Artist Support Pledge, which allowed me to sell older works that I would not normally sell through a gallery. This time round, I'm selling a new series of drawings through the scheme.

VAS Bothy Project Residency Shortlist

Very pleased to have made the shortlist for the Visual Arts Scotland Bothy Project Residency.

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Alan Davie: 100 years of Magic online event

Thank you to all of those who tuned into Alan Davie- 100 years of Magic this week. It was a fantastic turn out, many more than expected, with lots of interesting questions and engagement throughout.

News: Mrs Jay & W. Gordon Smith book published!

News: Film still on the Tate website!

Delighted that an image of my 20-foot-long painting Glen Muick is now up on the British Art Network section of the Tate website!

Yaa Addae, Thoughts on Decolonising the art world

I've been listening to the Art History Babes Podcast recently and found a fantastic episode with artist writer, curator, and organiser of the platform Decolonize the Art World , Yaa Addae.

News: Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Decade by Decade

I'm delighted to have been asked by the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust to select a work to talk about for the 1950s, in their Decade by Decade Series .

About my work: Gathering a new colour palette

Just outside Glasgow, the new year has begun with heavy snow and brilliant sunlight.

News: The Herald!

My painting Glen Muick is at The Lemond Gallery, Bearsden! The Herald got wind of this and I'm very pleased to say, featured me on page 2 of the 5th December Herald edition!

News: Update on my Tate's British Art Network Commission!

After two months of hard work, I'm delighted that my five-panel painting 'Glen Muick' is finally complete! The painting features in my film commission 'Landscape in Lockdown' appearing soon via the British Art Network on the Tate website.

You can also view it on youtube here: https://youtu.be/7csgE5diD9U

About my work: Hanging Series

The incorporation of materials into my works led me to align with the contemporary interest in a form of painting outwith the confines of the stretcher.

The stretcher does not become an aesthetic device in itself, but instead the lack of confinement expands the painting, the landscape is no longer framed but is free form.

News: Tate's British Art Network Commission!

Excited to say that I have been awarded a commission from the Tate's British Art Network?!?

Scrovengi Chapel Visit

I just stumbled across a piece of writing I did for the Scotland + Venice Project about my visit to the beautiful Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.

News: My Freelance Panel Discussion for ECA

https://www.degreeshow.eca.ed.ac.uk/2020/edinburgh-innovations-x-eca-conversation-experienced-freelancers Huge thank you to Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh Innovations for inviting me to speak on this Freelance Panel Discussion!

News: My Artist Talk for the Society of Scottish Artists

Huge thank you to the Society of Scottish Artists for inviting me to speak about my art practice this week!

News: Interview with Arusha Gallery!

https://www.degreeshow.eca.ed.ac.uk/2020/edinburgh-innovations-x-eca-conversation-experienced-freelancers

Huge thank you to Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh Innovations for inviting me to speak on this Freelance Panel Discussion!

‘We should not walk up a mountain but into them, thus exploring ourselves as well as them’ 

Nan Shepherd (1893-1981), The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland. 1977