OUR ARTISTS
Who is in the gallery right now
AMANDA MURRAY
Paintings
Amanda Murray was born and brought up in Dumfries and Galloway. Following a brief sojourn in Edinburgh she returned to Galloway. The wonderful scenery, varied weather and superb light have inspired her work ever since.
Over the years she has experimented with many mediums but eventually settled on a mixture of acrylic paint,oils, pastels and sometimes inks. It gives her the freedom to reflect all the beautiful textures and colours that surround her in rural Wigtownshire.
She has exhibited widely in Scotland, USA, Canada and recently after winning a national competition her work was shown in the Mall Galleries in Pall Mall London.
The recent work in this exhibition reflects the different seasons and moods of the strange year we have all been through.
CAROLINE SMITH
Illustrator
Caroline has worked as a Graphic Designer for over 35 years and this carries through into the illustrative style of her work.
Originally from the midlands, a move to Wigtownshire 6 years ago inspired a return to painting and drawing for the first time since she attended art school in the 1980’s. Starting with watercolours and acrylics she has more recently moved to digital art and her most recent creations are ‘painted' using an iPad Pro, a format that sit’s well with her love of design and decades spent designing on a Mac.
She enjoys creating bright, modern images that spark peoples memories of places they’ve been and things they have done. Caroline primarily sells her art online as prints and is keen to provide affordable art that anyone can enjoy in their home.
HELEN RYMAN
Paintings
Immersed in Galloways rugged landscape influences my thoughts and inspires creativity. From dawn until dusk the landscape is everchanging and I find that exciting. Colour and light changes causing emotions to alter and you realise how intertwined we are with our environment. I am drawn to the colour and composition first, with detail being secondary.
When I’m outdoors I sketch and paint, recording colours and light of a moment. Once back in my studio I work from these ideas then construct larger oil paintings aiming to recreate the emotion of a particular scene.
I work predominantly in oil paints and I am largely self taught.
HOPE LONDON
Paintings
I started life as an artist back in the 1970s, in a studio squat under the elevated train in Jamaica, New York. After studying at the City University of New York (BA Queens College, MFA in drawing and painting, Brooklyn College), I became a member of an artists' organisation that founded the first cooperative gallery in the Borough of Queens. An unconscious objector to career planning, I worked in a deli in Brooklyn, was a lawyer (still recovering) and film animator in LA and consultant director of Castlefield Gallery in Manchester before gravitating to my home in rural Wigtownshire twenty years ago.
As a visual artist, singer-songwriter and co-creator of award-winning arts-based education programmes, I believe in the transformative power of the arts and often work with communities to unleash creative potential. My work re-connects me to a natural sense of wonder and oneness too often obscured by the stress and demands of everyday life. Drawing and painting help me make sense of the world. The power of colour and line to tap into emotion is amazing.
I start each project without knowing exactly how I’ll deal with an idea. The work evolves through the process of creation. Risk leads to discovery. I hope people will sense some of the uncertainty and excitement I felt during the process of making the work, and perhaps discover something for themselves that I didn’t even realise was there.
STEWART LAMMIE
Painting
STEWART LAMMIE was born in West Yorkshire then moved to Argyll as a child. He attended Lochgilphead High School, and graduated from Glasgow Caledonian University. He became a full-time artist in 1996 and lived in Argyll, Sutherland and Perthshire before moving to Newton Stewart in 2004.
He paints in oil, and tends to work with the cooler shades of the spectrum, often blending a fusion of blue washes mixed with earthy colours. This wonderfully expresses Scottish light.
Artist’s Statement I attempt to capture the mood of the landscape around me, particularly the changing light at the coast. Plein air painting is usually the first step in my work, the experience of being in the landscape fires the creative process and ensures accurate drawing. In the studio I am able to rework paintings over a period of many weeks until I achieve the desired result. I can have as many as thirty paintings on the go at any one time.
I work in oils; the depth and subtlety of colour is important to me as are the textural advantages. I have been a painter for almost two decades and have striven to improve year on year. Â I believe my work is getting bolder in the physical use of the paint and in the use of colour. I paint every day in the studio or plein air and I believe this time is valuable in improving my work.
SYBIL MOSES
Mixed Media
As a mixed media artist, teacher and lecturer I am constantly aware of new beginnings both in the environment and people around me, and in my own artwork. So the theme for this exhibition attracted me immediately.
Over many years of working as a teacher and lecturer as well as an artist I have taught art within secondary, further & higher education in schools, colleges, prisons and community settings in both N. Ireland and Scotland.
Having grown up on a farm I find that rural environments, whether cultivated fields and pastureland or wild, remote environments are a continual source of inspiration and have featured in my work constantly.
All work in this exhibition is inspired by field scapes near my home in Northern Ireland and landscapes in both the Highlands and Galloway. I use a range of processes that are ongoing developments of traditional & contemporary patchwork, quilting freehand machine embroidery, collage and sewing techniques used with paints and fabrics that are then applied to a range of background materials.
As a mixed media artist I use textural qualities within fabrics, threads, stitch-making, paper, card, drawing materials, inks and paints to achieve effects that reflect the subject.
There are no limits to where this may lead - only more new beginnings!
To commission a piece of art by any of our artists, contact us today.