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Braemar Literary Festival September

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I’m excited to be part of the Braemar Literary Festival this year. Not as an author, more as an artist in thrall to an author; namely Nan Shepherd and her much acclaimed book about the Scottish Cairngorms: The Living Mountain.

My paintings from the Living Mountain Series will be showing in the Highland Pavilion, Braemar on the 27th and 28th September and I’ll be there for ‘meet the artist’ from 12 noon to 1:30pm.

If you follow this blog you’ll maybe remember the exciting commission I was given by the Folio Society, London, in 2021. The Folio were re-publishing their own edition of The Living Mountain, and sought an artist to illustrate the book. I felt honoured and surprised – this being one of my favourite books of all time! (the Folio edition is now completely sold out – it’s possible to buy a copy online from booksellers but it’s now into the £100s. How I wish I’d held on to more of the copies they gave me. I have just one left)

The Braemar Literary Festival was founded by world-famous art collectors Hauser and Wirth, who own the Fife Arms Hotel in Braemar. The’ve turned the hotel into a quite extraordinary experience, the place is festonned with stunning original works of art including a Picasso and an enormous Bruegel in the dining room. The atmosphere is high-end but not uppity, the style in keeping with its Victorian heritage, they even have a framed letter by Queen Victoria tucked away in an alcove somewhere.

Guest speakers to the festival will include Monica Ali, Alexander McCall Smith, David Nichol (known most recently for the televised version of his heart-rending novel; One Day), Giles Coren and many more interesting authors, journalists and presenters (link Here)

Hope to see you there! Here’s the info again …

My paintings from the Living Mountain Series will be showing in the Highland Pavilion, Braemar on the 27th and 28th September and I’ll be there for a ‘meet the artist’ hour from 12 noon to 1:30pm.

” …waves lapping, light dancing.”

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Above: North Beach Iona, May . Oil on 30×20″ linen canvas. Rose Strang 2025

“Rose Strang observes North Beach, Iona (May) with atmospheric close-up clarity. The circle of black rocks, pale sand and turquoise shallows, lead to the misty mountains beyond with a loose, impressionistic style. Textured brushstrokes contrast the weathered ruggedness and calm serenity of the isolated beach on this Spring day.  The palette is cool and luminous dominated by icy blues – waves lapping, light dancing.  Strang’s poetic, painterly voice speaks not just of the physical landscape but of its ever-changing natural elements with quiet contemplation.”

A really lovely review by Art Mag art critic Vivien Devlin today of the Graystone Gallery’s Edinburgh Festival Exhibition. Poetic, descriptive writing by a genuine art lover. Thank you Vivien! –

Edinburgh Festival Exhibition, 2025,  ‘A Convergence of Vision’ by 30 artists @ Graystone Gallery 

Exhibition Saturday 19th July

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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 …

Storm Island

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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!

Iona Sea, new exhibitions

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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 …

Iona Sea and new exhibitions in 2025

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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”

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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 …

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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

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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!