Coming up in just 9 days, The Edinburgh Festival Exhibition at The Graystone Gallery, Edinburgh!
Saturday 19th June, 2 to 4pm, Graystone Gallery
Here’s a litle vid showing the inspiration of Iona and clips of the painting process …
Above: Forest of Luffness 18. Oil on Canvas Diptych 30×30″ and 30×12″. Rose Strang 2025
This is the final painting in the current Luffness series. I may continue painting this theme later in the year but it would take a different form.
Rather than explain or describe the meaning behind this series, I’m going to let the documentary explain that.
It’s going to be beautiful, with specially commissioned music, a highly talented film-maker, powerful ideas, and moving observations, expressed by Richard Demarco. The first draft might be ready by mid July. After some final tweaks it should be ready for public viewing by August.
In the meantime, here are all the paintings in the series …
Above. Storm Island. Oil on 50×50″ linen canvas. Rose Strang 2025.
Part of a series in progress for the Graystone Gallery‘s Edinburgh Festival exhibition launching to the public Saturday 19th July 2025 from 1 to 3pm
The photo below includes me to show scale …
The painting’s called Storm Island because it shows a somewhat abstracted view from the north beach of Iona to Eilean Annraidh, which means (you guessed it!) Island of Storm in Gaelic.
It doesn’t look remotely stormy from the shore, it generally looks somewhat tranquil, even mystical in the way that islands do until you’re on them. A sense of untouched purity with its white sand and luminous tuquoise water.
I can never capture in traditonal or realist paintings that feeling of mystery. Abstracting this painting a little, and painting from a place where I’m thinking of colour, shape and texture rather than what’s actually there, maybe gives more of a sense of that feeling.
The foreground suggests a rockpool. The rock pools on the north beach of Iona are incredible sometimes, you feel you’ve stumbled upon some sort of dragon’s lair, with this lime green water among the jagged jet black rocks.
I have one more of these semi abstract works to finish this week, then the series for the Graystone Gallery is complete. The exhibition launches with a preview on Saturday 19th July from 1 to 3pm. Hope to see you there!
Above: Iona Abbey from North Beach. Oil on 30×20″ linen canvas. Rose Strang 2025
Today’s painting, above, is one of two landscapes for the upcoming Graystone Gallery exhibition in Edinburgh which launches on Saturday 19th July this year from 1 to 3pm
I’m taking these two landscapes as a starting point for two much larger abstract works for the Graystone, about which I’m very excited as I really awant to play with colour, mood and texture, not just views of Iona, lovely as those are to paint!
Just looking at my palette at the end of today is an inspiration!
More next week …
Above: North Beach Iona, May. Oil on 30×20 inch linen canvas. Rose Strang 2025
Lots of exciting new projects coming up!
The painting above is one of a series I’m creating for the Graystone Gallery, Edinburgh for their Edinburgh Festival exhibition, which launches on Saturday July 19th from 1 to 3pm
The painting below is for the Limetree Gallery‘s upcoming Summer Exhibition which launches 3rd July. You can preview or reserve paintings now by contacting them on their website.
(If you’re interested in buying or reserving one of the paintings please contact the galleries direct on the links in the above paragraph, thank you).
I have another three at larger sizes for the Graystone coming up. Readers of the blog will know how much Iona means to me, and to thousands of other people who visit the island every year. It’s a special place I’ve been visiting now for about thirty four years and I’d say it’s one of my biggest inspirations as an artist.
The next larger paintings will be a bit more abstract, but I know that people find these paintings of turquoise sparkling water joyful, and so do I!
This series is doubly special since my partner Adam and I prepared the canvases ourselves with sretcher bars and raw linen.
I’ve kept the lovely texture and colour of the linen by using clear gesso. If you look at the close ups of ‘Sea Light, Iona’ and ‘Iona North Beach, May’ below, you can see the unpainted canvas …
More soon …
Above: Forest of Luffness 17. Oil on 30×30 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2025
This is changed quite a bit from the last post, I wasn’t getting the sense of light in the forest – it was afternoon and the tones were warm.
Here’s the last version and posted and today’s side-by-side …
A detail and a close up of my palette – there’s always a nice build up of the coour scheme by the end of a series, then it’s all scrubbed back (this is a glass palette so it’s easier to scrub back) before the next series. …
One more painting and the series will be complete! I’d love to get on with that that tomorrow but we’re off to the beautiful Isle of Iona for our anniversary!
While there I’ll be sketching, painting and photographing for my next series, which will be some large, textured semi-abstract seascape paintings on unbleached linen for the Graystone Gallery, Edinburgh
I’m very excited about the Graystone Exhibition – it launches 18th July and will be part of the Edinburgh Festival. If you click on the link above you can see they show some exciting work and it’s great to be a part of that.
I’ll also be contributing some work as part of the Limetree Gallery‘s Summer Exhibition this year and if you read this blog you’ll know how happy I am to be included as part of their excellent year-round exhibition programme!
Much more about all of that soon, but, one thing at a time. I’ll complete the Luffness series first!
The Luffness series is very much a ‘slow-burn’ as it were, since I want to show the series privately at first, alongside the accompanying documentary. It has been the most absorbing and challenging series of my life so far. The documentary describes the collaborative aspect of a long-term art project like this – all the much loved people involved, the ideas, themes, research and experience.
The Luffness series and documentary probably won’t show publically until early next year. So in a couple of weeks I’ll be posting more here about the Graystone Gallery and Limetree Gallery series very soon!
Above: Forest of Luffness 17. Oil on 30×30 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2025
Clickable details below …
I’ve been lost in a sea of John Singer Sargent paintings these last few days, particularly this one …
What a beauty. Those dashes of lemon yellow, his incredible understanding of light. I can see this is also a bit of an erotic theme as he was never a very monogamous character, but that’s not what captivates me about this painting. I wish I’d seen it sooner in this series! Then again, we don’t want to be derivative I suppose.
This is the penultimate painting of the series. I might have said that before but I’m creating an extra one just in case. I want the series to be sevent paintings only.
More next week …
Above: Forest of Luffness 16. Oil on 30×30 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2025
(Clickable images below.)
I’m now nearing the end of the Forest of Luffness series. I have two more at this size which will be far more simple, compositionally, than the painting below. Then I’ll decide which seven paintings to choose for exhibition.
As you can see I’ve included the effigy, of which I’m no longer nervous! There will be one more depicting the effigy.
More tomorrow …
Above: a piece by artist George Wylie, from the Demarco Archives Romanian Room.
Such is the service of a fine art and of ships that sail the sea but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is as utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird. (Joseph Conrad).
Today Adam and I dropped in to talk with Richard Demarco and Terry Newman at the Demarco Gallery and Archives at Summerhall in Edinburgh. Tomorrow we’ll be continuing to film the upcoming documentary about the Luffness and Carmelite Friary project.
It strikes me that when I write a feature here on an artist, arts venue or project, it’s most often about Richard Demarco. This is because, put simply, he’s one of the most inspiring people I know in the arts world.
Also he’s the one person I know who will consider supporting my more meaningful, less commercial forays into art, such as the Planets project back in 2019 (inspired by C.S. Lewis and Michael Ward’s discovery that the Chronicles of Narnia were informed by Medieval cosmology and philosophy as well as Christianity). Or my current project inspired by the Carmelite Friary at Luffness
Summerhall in Edinburgh has now been sold and it’s no longer possible for the Demarco Archives to be housed and maintained there. Part of the Demarco archive is in the National Gallery of Scotland, but a large part – a vast collection of original art and documentation of the entire history of the Demarco Archive, Foundation and Gallery over the decades – no longer has a home.
As Richard is now 94, this is a pressing concern. Since Richard has been a champion of Poland and Polish art over the decades, going back to Iron Curtain times, it’s heartening (and exciting) that the Muzeum Sztuki, or the Museum of Art in Łódź, Poland wishes to keep, exhibit and maintain the Demarco Archives and collections in their entirety.
I wish that Scotland cared for its cultural heritage better than it does.
Below are a few highlights from the Romanian Room today, apologies for the informal photos which don’t do full justice to the works, including work by Paul Neagu, David Nash and Pat Douthwaite among others.
Firstly though, below, among my favourite work from the entire collecton is that by Terry Ann Newman (Deputy Director of the Demarco Trust). I find her direct, emotional, and visceral, yet elegant compositions and subject matter truly extraordinary …
Above: Iona to Staffa 1. Oil on 12 x 12 inch wood Rose Strang
On exhibition as part of Limetree’s Spring Show until May 31st are two works inspired by my favourite places in Scotland – the Isle of Iona and Coigach on the west coast.
Happily, I’ll be painting many more works inspired by Iona this year – for the Graystone Gallery in Edinburgh and the Limetree Gallery in Bristol. More on that in a week or so …
Rose Strang Artworks 