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About rosestrang

Artist, Painter

Forest of Luffness, painting progress 6

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Above: In progress – First of June. Forest of Luffness 3. Oil on 12 x 12 inch wood. Rose Strang 2024.

It feels good to be getting into the swing of a series for the first time in a while. I’ve created three so far in this First of June series, though today’s panting does need a bit more work ..

A bit more definition would help the painting and a few tweaks on the faces. The figure I’m happiest with is that of Terry Ann Newman (in the foreground with her back to us). Terry is the Deputy Director of the Demarco Trust and a very talented artist, when she finds time to paint. She’s holding a mobile in her hand behind her back, and it’s part of this series that we’re recording and witnessing the day in our different ways – there will be more of that.

I think I’ve managed to capture the feel of Richard’s detemination and physical struggle. I remember on the day in question I was a bit worried Richard might not want to walk the path to the Carmelite friary, because at 94 walking has become a challenge and the path required struggling over uneven ground in a forest for about ten minutes. Richard was characteristically determined however! He took great delight in the dappled light, the architecture of the stonework protecting the effigy and many other aspects of the day.

I think it was partly that he’d been inspired by my description of the ruined Carmelite friary near Aberlady but also, on the day, he was telling us about Pope Pius II who in 1435 walked barefoot in the snow all the way from Dunbar to Whitekirk to give thanks for his survival from a shipwreck in the Firth of Forth.

Whitekirk is just a few miles along the road from Aberlady and apart from the church, St Mary’s (which dates back to the 11th century) it also has a beautiful two-story stone building that served as a hostel for pilgrims travelling from Iona to Lindisfarne. Aberlady was an important stop on the way. After Aberlady and our visit to the Carmelite Friary, we also visited St Mary’s.

Readers of this blog might remember I took part on Landscape Artist of the Year a couple of years ago. It was fairly pointless escapade, frankly, except for meeting some nice folks (the other artists) one of whom was called Gregory Miller (artist website Here). He recently sent me a link to a film called No Greater Love, about a Carmelite Convent in Nottinghill, London.

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It’s worth a watch if you’re curious about their lifestyle. The footage and camera-work is Vermeer-like at times – capturing the natural light from windows and candles. It’s very, very quiet for the first half hour, then we get to know some of the nuns, what inspires them and why they’ve taken on this way of life.

It’s viewable on Amazon, not sure where else  …

No Greater Love

More painting tomorrow.

Forest of Luffness, painting progress 5

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Above and directly below: First of June. Luffness 2. Oil on 12 x 12 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2024

This is the second smaller work in a series exploring a day in June among the ruins of a Carmelite Friary. If you follow this blog you’ll know I’ve been exploring this theme from the start of the year and it’s been an interesting time…

Because I share a bit about my own creative process, it’s all hanging out there for everyone to observe how difficult it is to find the right way to approach a complicated subject!

I began with the idea of exploring a war-traumatised psyche – a dreamlike series exploring archetypal and abstract imagery. It produced these paintings below, quite different from my usual approach. It didn’t come easily but it was interesting as creative exploration.

This was followed by an attempt to depict the atmosphere of the small forest at Luffness, and the strangely affecting presence of an aged effigy depicting a 12th century crusader – almost worn to nothing. Mostly I was just trying to loosen up and find a way forward through a complicated subject – I’m an instinctive painter and although my mind is constantly active, I just can’t paint from a strategic cerebral perspective because my thoughts are rarely conclusive.

It was at this stage that a few people questioned the themes of my work, which brought me to a temporary grinding halt – a good thing since it made me think more deeply about the themes and where I stand regarding subjects such as faith, Christianity and war.

That experience was followed by a day which has now become the title of this series: The first of June in Luffness. There’s no way to summarise that day because so many aspects of it are ongoing parts of life. There’s no conclusion to my relationships to family and friends, the exploration of faith and spirituality, the exploration of art, or the response to violence and war. There’s just the fact that these things exist, ongoing.

I remember back in art college, when we were being taught about post-modernism, we were told that nothing is real, all is subjective. At the time, a good friend said ‘but suffering is real’, meaning that is surely something we can all agree on – an objective truth even though suffering has degrees of difference. How we respond to that is the question. Maybe one of the most useful books for me in recent years has been C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man – all about the concept of objectivity. It’s not an argument for religion or Christianity, it’s a philosophical work which looks at the concept of objectivity and ethics in cultures worldwide. Is there such a thing as a set of objective ideals we all understand to be true?

I’ve always liked Beckett’s lines:

Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.

I won’t pander to louts is the upshot of all this! Anyway, in these latest paintings I think I’ve found a way to explore the themes. More on this later.

Forest of Luffness, painting progress 4

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Above: Detail from a panting in progress – The First of June. Luffness

As you can see below there are several versions of this little painting. It’s oil on 10×10″ canvas and I’m sticking to this small size until I’m satisfied with my approach. Paint is just too expensive to waste on larger sizes until I know where I’m going.

I find the figure of Richard Demarco easier to paint. Painting myself is proving a challenge though! It’s partly because I don’t have space to get into detail and the fact that I don’t want to paint in detail.

I began with a straightforward depiction, but it doesn’t express what I’m interested in – it doesn’t express the light, or the feeling of being there.

So the next day I started again with a looser approach. Intriguiningly, this oddly Da Vinci-esque angelic figure appeared. I liked it – it didn’t matter that it doesn’t look like me – but inevitably I began to tamper with it and it was lost, sadly!

P1100586

Today I started again and, though it’s maybe not easy to see in these quick photos below – there’s far more atmosphere, light and expression. I’m happy with the depiction of Richard, but again, not so much with the figure of me. It’s not that I want an exact likeness, it’s more that I want an impression of light more than detail, because that day was a lot to do with incredible light.

Talking of lights. Thanks to a birthday gift from Adam I’ve been both blessed and cursed with the gift of a ‘daylight light’ which means I can carry on painting into the dark hours of winter. Given I’ve only stopped now at 11pm, I’ll have to keep an eye on my hours!

More soon …

June

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Above: June. I. Oil on 10×10 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2024.

A return to the subject that I began at the start of the year – namely my fascination with Aberlady and a day in June.

I think I’ve decided not to worry about either the subject matter or the way I paint it. I’ll just paint it!

Below is a work in progress, beginning to capture Richard Demarco’s fascinated expression as he encountered the effigy we all visited that day.

Here’s the painting frm the top of the post, clickable so you can see more detail –

More to come …

The Pond

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Above: The Pond. Oil on 32 by 32 inch wood. Rose Strang 2024.

This is a painting that began as a commission – inspired by a pond created out of love. I like it I think, it has a feel of Monet and Alex Katz – both artists I love (though I’m nowhere near the freedom of Monet nor the distilled shapes of Katz of course!)

I found it dream-like as a subject. The pond itself was created over many years by a landscape designer as a gift of love for his (now) wife. I wanted to capture the depth, darks, lights, then harmonies of a long term relationship.

Here are some enlargeable images and details including the painting as it looks on a mantlepiece…

Monet’s water lily paintings are so often underestimated as ‘pretty’. I find them cosmic! I highly recommend this episode from Matthew Colling’s series The Revenge of The Nice –

“A welcoming of the creatures …”

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Above – the latest triptych with myself included for an idea of scale.

I’ve been utterly dissatisfied with my paintings on the theme of Luffness, the Carmelite Friary, Aberlady and the entire theme of the last year – it feels I’ve not really captured what I set out to. Insead of authentic expression, I ended up painting what looks like childrens’ storybook paintings.

So as you can see, below, there’s the original triptyche, and below that – whatever it is I painted over it with today!

The top painting is prettier but it’s too literal. Even if it doesn’t matter that it’s very literal, it can’t be acceptable without an aknowledgement, or disclaimer about my intentions as an artist.

The effigy featured on the right of the top, original painting) is of a crusader from the 13th century. The fact that I’m looking at it with one of Europe’s most dedicated arts impressarios on the theme of art, war and the possibility of art as a means of healing dialogue (Richard Demarco) isn’t enough. Nor is the fact that my neice holds her baby tenderly in the bottom right of the painting. To my mind one of the world’s most powerful symbols of a plea for love in the face of military violence.

Today’s viewer is quick to judge. Not only viewers who are strangers to me, but even friends (as I discovered this year) take offense when my intention is to encourage questions. Why are we all there? Why are we witnessing this scene? Why is there a broken arch in the centre of the original painting? Why is the beauty of nature depicted alongside such a deathly artefact? Well, it doesn’t matter now, the broken arch is painted over.

Today’s painting over the original was nothing more than an instinctive splurge of graffiti over my previous effort. Maybe it’s better – or more free. I didn’t think much as I painted, except that a poem by Bejan Matur came to mind (see below) and for a few seconds I cried while I painted. Bejan Matur is from Kurdistan – one of the most militarily beleagured countries in the world. Her poems are full of vivid imagery and they talk of a time of peace and love, in this way she tells us exactly what we have to lose. I quoted ‘A Peaceful Morning’ in this post from 2016.

In a review of Matur’s writing, Anahit Poturyan observes:

(Matur) “writes from a country whose leaders are unkind to dissenters or freethinkers, especially those who remember the ghosts of the country’s past. Her poetry is mystical and tragic — she unearths and acknowledges the secrets witnessed by the stones and poplar trees. Evoking pagans and gods of lost times, she breathes new life into the village, nature, and forgotten parts of history with her words.”

(Original piece In the LA Review of Books)

Roses feature in my over-painting as a worldwide symbol of love. Also on the left, is the outline image of a Persian war helmet I copied as an art student many years ago. When I see these captivating, beautifully made artefacts of war – the effigy of a medieval crusader, or a Persian war helmet – I’m struck by the incongruity – why do these things co-exist? Back then and today, I’m inspired by the thought of what someone from those times might say to us now, if they spoke.

Academically, we can’t project our ideology on to history but rather we need to understand context, as I learned during post graduate studies at St Andrews where I studied museum and gallery curation.

(Above left, created in my early 20’s in 1993, in response to a Persian war helmet, above right).

As artists however, we can meditate on these ideas. So in all those times in these last few years when I visited the remains of the Carmelite friary and contemplated the effigy of a 13th century crusader, the phrase that repeated in my mind, along with a feeling of terrible sadness was ‘It continues’.

It shouldn’t be neccessary for me to explain that I am disgusted by the destruction of people in Palestine, or that I reject violence of any nature, from any group, especially when visited on innocent people. However, because apparently my guilt and sheer war-hawk bloodthirst as a white westerner is assumed, the worst will be imagined if I include the image of a stone effigy depicting a 13th century crusader in my painting, even though I include many references to question the western history of war in the name of religion.

Feeling stultified as an artist, I have given up on the theme that has occupied me for years, for now.

A Peaceful Morning

A time before time
A morning of peace
Of roses
And fountains.
A welcoming
Of the creatures
Of the latecomer
Rescued from the hand of sleep
In the dappled dawn.
So arms
Moved away from a statue’s body
And found a human.
Desired.
What belonged
Far more than words
Was love.

Bejan Matur

Seascapes

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Above: Sea Triptych. Oil on three 33×22 inch wood panels.

Below, some smaller works in this new seascapes series –

This series is part-inspired by the Aberlady landscape – which has been a focus this year in most of my paintings.

This style of painting feels very natural and comes easily to me, but I’m still working on expression of the Luffness woods and Carmelite Friary (in Aberlady theme). Sometimes there are too many ideas and it’s better to simply paint instinctively for a while until something more unified swims into focus.

The upshot is that I’ll return to that theme after a brief hiatus into my ‘default mode’ of moody seascapes!

More details soon …

Maspie Waterfall

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Above – Maspie Waterfall. Acrylic on 17 by 16 inch wood panel.

A semi-abstract painting of layered acrylic depicting Maspie waterfall in Autumn.

Maspie Burn winds its way from the Lomond Hills in Fife down to the beautiful little town of Falkland. It’s a quiet place, best known for Falkland Palace – a favourite dwelling place of Mary Queen of Scots. There have been settlements here going back into the mists of time, or pre-history to precise. If you keep walking up to the source of Maspie Burn, you’ll eventually encounter earthworks named Maiden Castle, which show the remains of an ancient fort.

Falkland recently became better known as ‘Inverness’ in the tv series Outlander – it’s very much cuter than Inverness mind you, inverness having become a small but busy city. Photo below, me posing in Falkland, ala ‘Claire’, looking quite a bit sturdier and shorter than the model-esque Caitriona Balfe!)

I left the painting fairly abstract as it captures the energy of Autumn without going too pretty. The wood was actually part of a series of old cupboards from a flat owned by some friends of ours. Knowing I usually paint on wood, they asked if I’d like use it for painting. Yes indeed! I like re-using stuff.

Some photos of Falkland and a photo from our walk this weekend at Maspie Waterfall, you can walk behind it!

Autumn Exhibition

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Above – Aberlady Shorelines III. Oil on 8×5.5 inch wood in oak frame. Rose Strang 2024

I’m delighted to be exhibiting these small oil sketches, framed in oak, at The Limetree Gallery this October. If you’re interested in the paintings, or would like to reserve one, please contact the gallery for details.

The Limetree Autumn Exhibition launches on the 24th October at Limetree Gallery, Bristol

Here are a few photos I took with my mobile today, showing these lovely oak frames, then below those – at the end of this post – are more detailed photos of all the paintings available for the Autumn Exibition at the Limetree Gallery, with titles and sizes.

These paintings represent the start of my Aberlady-inspired series this year. They were quick oil sketches designed to capture the atmospheric solitude and moody colours of the east coast in winter, such a contrast to my later paintings of Aberlady in June this year! More on that tomorrow…

In the meantime, here are all the paintings, below, which will be on exhibition at The Limetree Gallery, Bristol. As mentioned,please contact the gallery if you’d like to reserve any of these paintings before they go on exhibition 24th October this year…

An exciting new project …

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Above – a still from the upcoming documentary –

A moving, intimate insight into what makes an artist paint. This short documentary by filmmaker Manuel Pennuto is abuzz with love, capturing the enchantment of nature. While exploring the insecurities of creativity, it captures the fact that creativity is surely transformative.

I’m pretty excited about this documentary! As described above, it’s not simply about my personal creative process, it’s about everything and everyone that makes a creative project come to life and selling paintings is just one small aspect of what makes artists paint.

Manuel has kindly offered a short taster of what’s to come in the clip below. It’s not a trailer as yet, but I think it gives a sense of the ideas in his documentary …