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 …

Forest of Luffness. Painting progress 13

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Above: (Painting in progress) First of June. Forest of Luffness 10. Oil on 12×12″″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025.

I’m working on the hands and the rest of the background tomorrow (the easy part!) you can see pencil outlines.

Clickable images and details below –

Working on a close up portrait of Richard Demarco today for the Luffness series.

This is fairly small again at 12×12″ canvas. I took a still from film footage of our day at Luffness, from which I’m painting this portrait.

There were nine of us there that day last year, including little baby Atlas, but when I carefully look back through all the footage Manuel sent me (Manuel Pennuto is the documentary maker of the Luffness project) the person really paying attention is f course Richard and Terry.

It’s why I asked he and Terry Newman if they’d like to visit the friary ruins at Luffness.

I’d write more about that but it’s 9pm and I’m puggled! There’s nothing more complex than painting the human face – that is, if you truly want to capture expression, hence feeling tired. It’s a good thing I now have a painting lamp so I can paint all hours, but my back isn’t thanking me!

I feel I could create three portraits showing sight, hearing, touch and soul – the idea of (as D.H Lawrence put it) wholly attending.

More tomorrow …

Forest of Luffness, painting progress – 12

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Above: First of June. Forest of Luffness 9. Oil on 30 by 30 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2025

This is the largest in a series of the same subject. I wanted to create it on a large scale to really get the sense of the figures in a forest – possibly lost, or perhaps they’ve discovered themselves in a different realm or time!

Here are the three paintings at different sizes –

Forests seem to have always been associated with mystery, a search, sometimes the idea of freedom from authority, or the idea of spiritual seclusion. I’m a fairly instinctive painter – I don’t begin with a definite concept that I then execute precisely – far from it! I think this approach echoes what I find in landscape and why I paint it. Adding figures always brings tension – it makes the viewer ask more questions, especially when the group are so srangely placed as they are in this painting.

More paintings coming soon, I’m having a little break from it for a couple of days while I write a book of short stories I’ve been working on. More on that later …

Here’s aclose-up of the figures –

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…