Tag Archives: Scottish artists

Forest of Pishwanton 4

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Above: Wood Cabin. Pishwanton. Mixed media on 14×8″ wood. Rose Strang 2026

Today’s painting featuring spring in the foreswt of Pishwanton, following on from the previous three posts. This is a series I’m drawn to paint not just because spring emerging is such a joyful time of year, but also because of the location – Pishwanton in East Lothian.

It’s a piece of land that was formerly used as a tip, which was rescued by the Life Science Centre who decided to experiment with sustainable cultivating approaches isnpired by Steiner principles of observation and connectedness.

When I feel a bit less puggled (it’s been a busy day) I’ll write more, suffice to say for the moment that the principles of observation they describe chime with me, and the way I want to understand the subjects I paint. Not just visually, but in myriad ways. More of that next week.

 

Forest of Pishwanton 2

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Above: Today’s painting of birch trees in the forest of Pishwanton in East Lothian.

In the previous post I introduced the first painting in this series, explaining the odd name of the forest. The more I find out about this place, the more fascinating it becomes. For example, as well as the nearby ‘witch knowe’ – a witches hill, I discovered that the area now called Pishwanton (after the nearby river) is called Fairhill.

Quite pedestrian-sounding, a bit new-build estate maybe, but in fact it’s a new version of the original ‘Fairy Hill’. It seems the area was originally a place set aside for the ‘good people’, fairies in other words. Then in recent years it was used as a tipping site for rubbish and waste, until the Life Science Trust bought the land and returned it to original health.

I discovered all of this through the Life Science Centre’s website

It makes me want to deepen my understanding of their philosophy, which really feels like an antidote to all the destruction we’re witnessing in the world. I hope to get to know the area more. What began as an instinctive response – to paint the first signs of spring in these young birch forests, is growing into a genuine interest. Who knows where it will take me this year!

 

Forest of Pishwanton

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Above. Birch Trees and Willow Shelter. Mixed media on 14×14″ wood. Rose Strang 2026.

This painting is inspired by the birch forests of Pishwanton, which is situated next to a gushing stream and a hill where witches used to gather. In old Scots ‘pish’ means a fast flowing stream and ‘wanton’ means abundant. So there you are, that explains the strange place name!

Pishwanton is owned by the Life Science Trust and everything there is created, grown or built according to Steiner principles about harmony and conservation. Just being there feels more gentle, not in a precious sort of way – just the way that nothing jars, visually or to the nose.

I’ve visited a lot over the years, and now I’m creating a little series of paintings inspired by the arrival of spring in Pishwanton. I feel we could all do with the harmony of Pishwanton just now. Here are a couple of details from the painting ..

Tonight I’m off to see an exhibition in Edinburgh of drawings by Matthew Collings, he did a wonderful series of documentaries in the 1990s about art. He creates paintings with his wife Emma Briggs, and he also draws, very prolifically. I bought one of his sketches a couple of years ago. It’s a self portrait of Matthew Collings drawing a sketch of the artist Frank Auerbach after Auerbach died.  Although Collings says the drawings are instinctive, to me it speaks of mortality. I don’t know if it was intentional, but in the sketch Collings looks semi transparent, as if if disappearing from existence. I find it both moving and uplifting, and I love the colours. I took quite a while choosing the frame with Jamie from Edinburgh’s Detail Framing and I think it looks wonderful floating above the shipwreck n my bookcase, along from a sea triptych I painted a year or so ago.

The subject matter Collings chooses is simply what he experiences each day; memories or current situations and experiences. For the past year of so the best part of his drawings have been about the war on Gaza, tso he work is often harrowing, capturing the brutality visited upon innocent civilians by our world leaders. I’ll post more about the exhibition tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

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 …

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 –