Category Archives: Uncategorized

Iona Sea and new exhibitions in 2025

1 Reply

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 …

“the song of a destroyed wild bird”

Leave a reply

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 …

Documentary making …

Leave a reply

Above: still from a documentary-in-progress, by Manuel Pennuto, about the project I’m working on. The still features mysef and Jacob Olah, singer and musician.

I mentioned that I’d post some stills from the documentary-in-progress by Manuel Pennuto. The documentary will feature the series of paintings I’m working on just now, inspired by the ruins of a Carmelite Friary discovered in a forest.

A lot of my work is inspired by history, or the traces of history in landscape, as well as literature and music. I’ve been immersed in learning 12th century songs this past year and I’ve been enjoying singing lessons by voice teacher Jacob Olah – also a talented musician.

We all got together earlier this week to record a 12th century song called Bryd one Brere, which wil form part of the soundtrack of the doc’. Manuel lent me these wonderful stills from thefootage …

They show my husband Adam being his multi-talented self – sound-recording, conducting and playing a harmony he’d created on recorder to accompany the song. Also Jacob playing a guitar piece he arranged for the song. It was a lot of fun to be surrounded by these super-talented people!

The resulting documentary should hopefully be released in summer this year, all being well. It’s all about timing and whether we can find the right venue for both the doc;’ and the paintings.

More painting updates tomorrow…

Seascapes

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

2 Replies

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 …

2 Replies

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 …

Forest of Luffness, painting progress 3

Leave a reply

Above Forest of Luffness 4. Oil on 14×14 inch wood. Rose Strang 2024

Today’s painting (from a series in progress inspired by the presence and history of a Carmelite Friary in the forest of Luffness) features my neice holding her new born baby, standing within the Friary.

I wanted to capture the sense of strength and protection that a young mother exudes, then the style of painting changed slightly and became a bit more contemporary. Probably something to do with Emma’s outfit which was quite contemporary.

I like this as a smaller study in the series. (All four paintings from this particular summer series below). I’ve been exploring the theme of the Carmelite Friary in Luffness since January, but each set of paintings is distinct to each season.

‘The Path’

Leave a reply

The painting above The Path. Water mixable oil on 14 by 14 inch wood, depicts a meaningful walk (with Richard Demarco and Terry Ann Newman) towards the 12th century Friary ruins at Luffness recently.

More on that in this post – Dappled things

Some painting details …

.

A beautiful place …

Leave a reply

Above: Beauly substation.

What you see above is a view of the gravel quarry and SSEN (Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks) electricity substation near Beauly, Inverness-shire.

Beauly means ‘a beautiful place’ and despite these developments by SSEN, much of it still is. We were walking there again last weekend as part of a visit to the Kilmorack Gallery (showing the excellent exhibition Borrowed Land until 2nd March)

For perspective, here’s an old map of the area contrasted with a current view …

It’s pretty disheartening isn’t it? Imagine if you lived here though, and your favourite walk, through landscape like this (my photos of Beauly taken last weekend and last November) …

Was replaced with this …

The site includes numerous important archeological remains and the developments have obviously caused utter devastation to local wildlife.

SSEN (Scottish and Southern Electric Network) plan to extend their transmission line, create more wind farms and, the site at Beauly is to be extended from 60 acres to 860 acres, which is just huge.

Even worse, this is intended for areas across the Scottish Highlands …

Beauly-Power-Lines-map.jpg_49966326-1tm1z5xtl-542x564

Some might consider this the inevitable price of progress, but it’s not progress, and nor is it needed – which becomes very evident when you look into current and future energy requirements for Scotland and the UK. As usual, quite simply it’s a money-making excercise for global companies, supported and encouraged by our own government.

I’ll include more information about SSEN’s proposals ongoing, but I’m new to this and  you’ll be better informed about these developments and possible ways to help by joining this facebook page…

Communities Before Power Companies

It’s run by people who live in these areas who’ve been resisting such developments for years. If/when you join, invite all your contacts and remember that this affects us all -you might not be able to attend local meetings, but you can sign petitions, write to MP’s and share information.

Lastly, here are two excellent letters/articles published by the Press and Journal (by two admins for Communities Before Power Companies) Elaine Ritter and Denise Davis …