Above: Iona to Staffa 2. 0il on 12×12 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2022
My work is curently on show at the following exhibitions …
RSA Annual Exhibition (online) 6 May – 11 June 2023
SSA at the Caledonia Club London 21 June – 13 July
Summer Exhibition Limetree Gallery Bristol. 14th July till 31st August.
Also at these galleries:
Above: Through Kintail 3. Oil on 14×11″ wood. Rose Strang 2020.
I’m delighted that Through Kintail 3 will be on show at the Caledonian Club in London as part of an exhibition organised by the Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) from Tuesday 20th June this year.
This is a new collaboration with the SSA and The Caledonian Club
The exhibition will take place from 21 June – 13 July in the Club’s Drawing Room and will showcase leading contemporary art by SSA Professional Members.
The exhibition includes works from invited artist Alasdair Wallace, alongside selected works from SSA Professional Members.
Selected Artists:
Christopher Brook | Rowena Comrie SSA PPAI | Soosan Danesh | Jean Duncan | Rhona Fleming | Shona Grant | Cate Inglis | Philip J Lavery | Aileen Keith | Rosalind Lawless | Lindsey Lavender | David Lemm | Kenris MacLeod | Mary Morrison | Gemma Petrie | Jenny Pope | Derek Robertson | Charlotte Roseberry | Carol Sinclair | Christine Sloman | Joan Smith | Rose Strang | Frank To SSA ASGFA | Vasile Toch PSSA | Fenneke Wolters-Sinke | Luke Vinnicombe
The Caledonian Club, founded in 1891, is a private members’ club situated in the heart of Belgravia, London and is “the representative national club and headquarters for Scots in London.”
This exhibition is the first in a revolving exhibition programme exploring the possibility of multiple rolling exhibitions throughout the year.
Above, with Richard Demaro and Terry Newman at the RSA Annual exhibition, Edinburgh. (Photo Adam Brewster).
Also a few more photos below of a very enjoyable evening!
My painting below Chancelot Mill, the submission that earned me a spot on the Landscape Artist of the Year last year, is in the show. You can view it, or buy it, on the RSA website on this link – RSA Annual Exhibition
My favourite pieces of the evening were a beautiful landscape by Kate Downie, and a self portrait by Duncan Robertson – viewable on these links –
Kate Downie. Field Notes
Duncan Robertson. Working from home, all day long on my chaise longue
Duncan’s piece amused me as I used to share a flat with him and afew other friends (the flat featured in the photograph below) and it’s very characteristic! It was also really lovely to see Richard Demarco, now in his 90’s and looking as energetic as ever.
Obviously my favourite dapper gentleman of the evening was my partner Adam Brewster, looking as though he’d stepped out of a James Bond film in his black tie!
For contrast to the poshness of the event we dropped into a Pizza hut afterwards with our good friend Giles Sutherland. It was an unusually misty evening in Edinburgh, the Haar from the sea making the night lights of Edinburgh look very mysterious!
Above Beinn Odhar Bheag, Glenfinnan. Oil on 32×23″ wood. Rose Strang 2020
Back in my twenties (when money was even scarcer than it is today) one of my favourite things was to drive up to the west coast of Scotland with a friend or two and camp wild among the ancient oaks and white sands of Arisaig, Morar or Ardnamurchan.
Cooking over a tiny gas stove under heavy rain required ingenuity – an anorak served as a tarpaulin over the bushes above my head as I cooked spag bol from scratch, in the dark, with a torch strapped to my head. Numerous swigs from a bottle of red wine helped with the ever present midges, in as much as I was beyond caring after a while, though I’d awake the next day with a face so covered in midge bites it resembled a shiny pink football!
Something about camping wild can lead to the most immersive experiences though, I remember sitting at the foot of a freezing waterfall, dipping my head in the water to cool down the midge bites, until my face felt numb – a strangely pleasant sensation, relatively!
I’ve never much enjoyed constant city-life, and have from time to time lived in more rural locations (in Orkney, and on the Isle of Paros in Greece). So it’s a surprise even to me that it’s taken so long to move out of the city – next year I hope to move permanently to the countryside.
One of my favourite stops on the road to the isles was at Glenfinnan. Leaving the constant noise of Edinburgh we’d drive for a few hours to Fort William for supplies, then it’s just a half hour drive west to Glenfinnan. Beinn Odhar Bheag sits just south of the village of Glenfinnan, a place redolent with history and atmosphere. It was here that Charles Edward Stuart first gathered Highland clans from across Scotland for the fateful last war of independence which culminated at Culloden. And it’s the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct bridge here that featured in the Hogwart Express journeys in Harry Potter films.
Harry Potter hadnt been written back then, and I only vaguely knew about the Jacobite connection back then. What I loved was to drop in to the Glenfinnan House Hotel for a cup of tea. No matter how scruffy and muddy our car, or boots, we always felt welcome there. As soon as you enter the hall you’re greeted with a Scottish Highland miasma of huge log fire, vast dark oil paintings depicting various moody mountains, wildlife or battle scenes, a mish-mash of antique furniture and dark wood panelling.
On a sunny day, you might carry your pot of tea into one of the sitting room areas, clad in fading green tartan comfy chairs, where floor to ceiling windows look out on one of the most stunning views in Scotland – across the silvery Loch Shiel to wild mountains beyond. More likely though, you’d sit warming your damp feet in a huge sofa next to the fireplace and find that your head would be almost reeling with … the silence. The sheer redolent and resounding silence after all the city noise!
I painted Beinn Odhar Bheag (pronounced ‘Ben ower beg’ meaning ‘the little dun coloured hill’ in Scottish Gaelic) a few years ago and didn’t think much of it at the time. Dusted off and looked at again, it’s better than I remembered! So I’ll be submitting it for a landscape painting award, and we’ll see what happens.
I’ve left the wood showing through and there’s very little paint used. I added a swathe of darker colour to the left to suggest the ever changing light on the mountains as the clouds pass over.
Adam and I were lucky enough to stay at the hotel for my birthday in November 2020. Though it was lockdown it still felt warm and friendly and we absolutely loved it.
I’m sorry to hear that the couple who managed and cooked for the hotel have moved on to new projects after twenty years. So it’s temporarily closed at the moment, presumably due to open again soon once they’ve appointed new managers, I hope. I wish them luck!
Above – Washed in Blaeberry. The Living Mountain Series. Oil on 30×20 inch linen canvas. Rose Strang 2023
Exhibition – The Living Mountain: Dreaming a Response launches today at The Heriot Gallery, Dundas Street, Edinburgh and is on for just one week, finishing this Sunday April 23rd.
As well as the Living Mountain series, I was inspired to paint several more works for the exhibition. They’re looser and a bit more abstract than the original paintings which were created for the The Living Mountain book, so these new paintings are also larger.
I had a lovely time yesterday helping Sue and Stephen, owners of The Limetree Gallery, install the show, which looks really lovely in the Heriot Gallery (The Limetree collaborated with the Heriot for this exhibition as they wanted the exhibition to be in Scotland).
The eight-minute film about the project, with specially commissioned music by Atzi Muramatsu, will also be on show at the gallery, adding to the atmosphere of a project that has been really special.
Two paintings from the Living Mountain series have already sold. You can view the entire series on this link which includes contact details if you’d like to reserve or buy a painting –
And here are the rest of the paintings created recently for the exhibition. All welcome, hope to see you there!
(Above: Among Elementals. The Living Mountain Series. Oil on 60x42cm wood. Rose Strang 2020.)
“A stunning series of images – a symphony of subtle essences, distilled experiences, fleeting memory fragments and deep, heart-felt lingering impressions.” *****
Giles Sutherland, the Times, 21st February 2023
It was an absolute delight to read Giles Sutherland’s sensitive, insightful review (link below) in The Times today. Not simply the understanding of intention and inspiration behind the paintings, but because it so succinctly gets to the core of why Nan Shepherd’s beautiful book The Living Mountain inspires artists and creative thinkers everywhere, especially in our contemporary times.
Here’s a link to the article (if you can’t access the article the text is copied in full below):
Rose Strang Review – Symphony of Subtle Essences and Impressions
Visual Art: Giles Sutherland
Rose Strang
The Living Mountain – Dreaming a Response
Scottish Poetry Library
Edinburgh
Until 31 March
STAR RATING: ***** (FIVE)
Not that long ago, in the mid 80s, in response to a question from a brave, young, female north American student, my Scottish literature lecturer opined that the reason there were no women writers on the syllabus was there that there were ‘no Scottish women writers of substance’.
How shocking that such nonsense was then so deeply imbedded in academe. The hapless lecturer had clearly not heard of Nan Shepherd, born in 1893, a native of Deeside and contemporary of literary luminaries such as Neil Gunn, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Marion Angus, Helen B. Cruickshank, and Agnes Mure Mackenzie.
Shepherd – whose literary ability was at least equal to that of her male peers – is currently undergoing a reappraisal and revival, supported by such talents as the writer Robert Macfarlane, and the artist Rose Strang. Strang’s paintings, which form the basis of this show, were commissioned to illustrate a new edition of Shepherd’s classic of nature writing, The Living Mountain, first published in 1977.
Following in Shepherd’s footsteps, Strang travelled to the Cairngorms, to places such as Càrn Bàn Mòr. Her journey provided inspiration for a series of nine oil paintings, inspired by the mountains’ genus loci and the fluid poeticism of Shepherd’s prose.
The result is a stunning series of images – a symphony of subtle essences, distilled experiences, fleeting memory fragments and deep, heart-felt lingering impressions.
Strang’s painting makes us ask deep questions about what painting is, how it functions and gives us answers to its ultimate purpose. Like Shepherd’s words, and indeed the Cairngorms themselves, these paintings work slowly, generatively taking hold of our senses and our imagination, striking deeply at our core or, if you like, our souls.
‘One cannot know the rivers till one has seen them in their sources but this journey…is not to be undertaken lightly. One walks among elementals and elementals are not governable…’ wrote Shepherd in the first chapter.
Strang’s ‘Among elementals’ deals with the idea of seeking the source of things, for like Gunn, Shepherd’s thinking was infused with the power of symbolism, so important in Eastern and Celtic culture. Here, as in the other paintings, there is a sense of wonder and the fragility of the human presence among the mountains’ deep geological time.
A wonderful film by Strang, with atmospheric music by Atzi Muramatsu, provides yet another accompaniment to Strang’s imagery and Shepherd’s words.
See this small but perfectly formed show if you can.
*The exhibition runs at the Heriot Gallery, Edinburgh, 17-23 April.
The Living Mountain. Dreaming a Response showcases new paintings by Rose Strang and goes on exhibition at the Scottish Poetry Library, and the Heriot Gallery, Edinburgh, in February then April 2023.
A response to one of Scotland’s best-loved classics of landscape literature, this series of paintings was commissioned by the Folio Society London for their 2021 publication of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd.
Robert MacFarlane, award-winning author of best-selling books The Lost Words and The Wild Places and one of the UK’s best-known devotees of The Living Mountain, writes in the introduction to this Folio publication of the book:
Strang’s paintings are intensely dynamic, seethingly alive with stroke, dab, scratch and drip. Each of Strang’s seven paintings takes a phrase from The Living Mountain and dreams a response to it.
16th February 3 to 5pm. Exhibition Preview (free). Scottish Poetry Library
7pm, 17th February: Panel discussion (ticketed, 310, see link below) Scottish Poetry Library and audience Q+A with Erlend Clouston (Nan Shepherd’s literary executor, Rose Strang, Merryn Glover (author of A House Called Askival, currently writing a book inspired by Nan Shepherd) and Kerri Andrews (author of A History of Women Walking, currently editing a volume of Nan’s letters). Chaired by Anna Fleming (author of Time on Rock).
Book your ticket here … https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/happy-130th-birthday-nan-shepherd-tickets-514890560527?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
The Scottish Poetry Library, Crichton Close, Royal Mile, Edinburgh.
17th to 23rd April. The Heriot Gallery, Dundas Street, Edinburgh. The Living Mountain. Dreaming a Response (in collaboration with The Limetree Gallery, Bristol).*
Exhibition of the original paintings commissioned by the Folio Society for their 2021 publication of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd.
*The series of paintings will be for sale and exclusively available from the Heriot Gallery during the one-week exhibition.
(Please contact the Heriot Gallery with any enquiries about the exhibition. art@heriotgallery.com).
The Heriot Gallery, 20A Dundas Street, Edinburgh
The Living Mountain. Dreaming a Response showcases new paintings by Rose Strang and goes on exhibition at the Scottish Poetry Library then the Heriot Gallery, Edinburgh, in 2023.
A response to one of Scotland’s best-loved classics of landscape literature, this series of paintings was commissioned by the Folio Society London for their 2021 publication of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd.
Robert MacFarlane, award-winning author of best-selling books The Lost Words and The Wild Places and one of the UK’s best-known devotees of The Living Mountain, writes in the introduction to this Folio publication of the book:
Strang’s paintings are intensely dynamic, seethingly alive with stroke, dab, scratch and drip. Each of Strang’s seven paintings takes a phrase from The Living Mountain and dreams a response to it.
16th February 3 to 5pm. Exhibition Preview (free). Scottish Poetry Library
7pm, 17th February: Panel discussion (ticketed, 310, see link below) Scottish Poetry Library and audience Q+A with Erlend Clouson (Nan Shepherd’s literary executor, Rose Strang, Merryn Glover (author of A House Called Askival, currently writing a book inspired by Nan Shepherd) and Kerri Andrews (author of A History of Women Walking, currently editing a volume of Nan’s letters). Chaired by Anna Fleming (author of Time on Rock).
Book your ticket here … https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/happy-130th-birthday-nan-shepherd-tickets-514890560527?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
The Scottish Poetry Library, Crichton Close, Royal Mile, Edinburgh.
17th to 23rd April. The Heriot Gallery, Dundas Street, Edinburgh. The Living Mountain. Dreaming a Response (in collaboration with The Limetree Gallery, Bristol).*
Exhibition of the original paintings commissioned by the Folio Society for their 2021 publication of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd.
*The series of paintings will be for sale and exclusively available from the Heriot Gallery during the one-week exhibition.
(Please contact the Heriot Gallery with any enquiries about the exhibition. art@heriotgallery.com).
The Heriot Gallery, 20A Dundas Street, Edinburgh
Coming up early next year are two exhibitions featuring the Living Mountain paintings, commissioned by The Folio Society to illustrate their 2021 publication of The Living Mountain, by Nan Shepherd.
As well as paintings, a couple of videos are in the works and I’m very excited about these! I’ve commissioned Atzi Muramatsu (a friend and collaborator since 2013) to create a new piece of music to accompany the videos, which will be released in late January/early February 2023.
Painting has taken a bit more of a back seat while everything gets organised, but happily dates and venues are now confirmed and the series will be on show next year, firstly at The Scottish Poetry Library then at The Heriot Gallery, all details below…
17th February to 31st March. The Scottish Poetry Library. The Living Mountain. Dreaming a Response.
Exhibition of the original paintings included in the 2021 Folio Society publication of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd.
17th February 7pm. The Scottish Poetry Library. Panel discussion with Erlend Clouston (literary executor, the Nan Shepherd estate), Rose Strang Kerri Andrews (other guests tbc)
The Scottish Poetry Library, Crichton Close (off the Royal Mile) Edinburgh.
17th to 23rd April. The Heriot Gallery, Dundas Street, Edinburgh. The Living Mountain. Dreaming a Response.*
Exhibition of the original paintings included in the 2021 Folio Society publication of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd.(in collaboration with The Limetree Gallery, Bristol).
*The series of paintings will be exclusively available from the Heriot Gallery during the one-week exhibition.
The Heriot Gallery, 20A Dundas Street, Edinburgh
Above: Scottish Highlands – “…with rain on your eyelashes”. Oil on 48×48 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2022.
The Scottish Highlands could be described as northern rainforest with an average of 182 inches of rain falling each year! Dreich! You might say, but it’s all about perspective …
The commissioner of the painting above, is Jamie Johnston, who lives in Colorado where she runs a wonderful organic bee farm that’s been in the family since 1908 – The Beekeeper’s Honey Boutique.
Jamie decided to get married in Scotland back in 2016 – ‘It rained the whole time’ she said, ‘but I loved it!’ She got in touch with me because she’d ordered a copy of the Folio Society’s publication of The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. (I’d been commissioned to provide paintngs for the book). Jamie described her enjoyment of the paintings while reading the book, which led to her contacting the Limetree Gallery who represent most of my work.
She particularly loved the rainy dark ones which I love painting – they reminded her of the rainy weather during her romantic holiday and wedding in the Scottish Highlands.
Jamie decided that what she’d really like was a large version for the walls of her new home. The remit was just to paint whatever I liked, as long as it captured something of the Scottish Highlands drenched in rain. As any artist knows, it’s such a pleasure to be given a free rein to experiment, so I immediately began to visualise how it might look and how I’d create the right feel and atmosphere.
Jamie had sent a few photos of her time in the Highlands, which were really lovely as photos, but she explained these were just to give a sense of the sort of thing that had caught her eye – she didn’t intend for me to copy them. I did use one of them as a starting point, for composition and because I liked the waterfall and cloudy skies. Once the basic composition was sketched in though, I just built up layers of paint, drips and splodges until it had what I thought was the right feel. I wanted to get the sense of the Highlands – that pelting rain can quickly turn to sunshine then back again in the course of a few minutes!
Also giving a true sense of how water forms the landscape in Scotland, cutting swathes through rock and landscape over time – and further back in time – the retreating glacial action that gave those hump-backed whale-like shapes to the mountains.
You never know if you’ve managed to capture what a person has in mind, so I was swithering a bit on whether to add more, or change the painting. In the end I decided to send the image to Jamie by email to see what she thought. Painting it was a pleasure, but how someone reacts is what makes the commission a success.
I opened the email with some trepidation, so you can imagine what a huge smile Jamie’s reply put on my face for the rest of the day! …
“ROSE!!!!
I am dying!!! WOW!!! It is soooo incredibly beautiful…even more so than I imagined possible!!! Like I literally cannot stop staring at it!!! Those clouds…the colors on the mountain…those colors of that mountain valley down below…SERIOUSLY…how do you do that?! That is incredible!!! The talent that you have contributed to this world literally blows me away!!! I’ve never used this many exclamation marks in my life but I am on such a high right now!!!
It is beautiful. I love it immensely. Thank you for sharing your talent with me. It makes me very happy knowing I get to hang this (the first picture we will hang in our new home) & I can have a coffee or glass of whiskey & just stare at it & get lost in my memories through your beautiful painting. THANK YOU!!! Love, love, love. You captured EVERYTHING I had hoped for & then some”.
This blew me away as a response – music to my ears indeed!! Jamie also gave me the go-ahead to title the painting and so I began to think of romantic poems by Scottish poets (I too find the rainy Highlands romantic!) my favourite was this little gem, by Edwin Morgan:
Kiss me with rain on your eyelashes,
come on, let us sway together,
under the trees, and to hell with thunder.
Edwin Morgan. 2004. (Poem commissioned by the Scottish Poetry Library, Edinburgh for Valentine’s Day 2004).
Hence the title! Scottish Highlands – “…with rain on your eyelashes”. And here’s another photo to show scale ..
A HUGE thank you to Jamie for this really lovely commission – Jamie and partner can always expect a warm welcome here in Edinburgh should they return at some point. In the meantime, I too shall enjoy a wee whisky in front of it before it wings its way through the clouds to Colorado!
Rose Strang Artworks 