“…an emerald after it has just been split, placed in that dell would see its brightness fade against the colours of the grass and flowers.”
Dante, Purgatorio, Canto VII
Traces. Forest of Luffness 2. Oil on 30 x 30 inch canvas. Rose Strang 2025
Traces comprises two series of paintings by artist Rose Strang, a film by Manuel Pennuto and a collaboration between a group of artists and friends, including Richard Demarco CBE, artist Terry Ann Newman, animator and composer Adam Brewster and author Robert de May.
Introduction
What does the 800-year-old effigy of a crusader in an East Lothian forest have to say to our modern world?
Edinburgh-born artist Rose Strang first encountered the site of a ruined Carmelite Friary in East Lothian in 2021. Beneath its broken arch lies the time-worn stone effigy of a 13th-century crusader. Discovering that the crusader died of disease at Carthage after being cared for by Carmelite friars, an order born in response to war which embraced peace, silence and spiritual healing, she began to draw parallels between the legacy of the Crusades and the impact of conflict today.
The first series of paintings is a trilogy of works; Abyss, Veil and Effigy, an exploration of the war-traumatised psyche of a 13th century crusader.
The second series: Traces. Forest of Luffness originated on a June morning in 2024, when a group of artists, family and friends, including Richard Demarco CBE, artist Terry Ann Newman, animator and musician Adam Brewster, filmmaker Manuel Pennuto and author Robert De May, joined Rose Strang at the site of the medieval Carmelite friary.
Traces. Forest of Luffness is the work that emerged from that day in June: a 25-minute documentary film by award-winning filmmaker Manuel Pennuto and a series of paintings by Rose Strang. Together, they respond to a pilgrimage in the forest and what survives across time; in landscape, in stone, and in the human capacity for both destruction and reconciliation.
Traces | Film Trailer
Where can you view Traces?
The next screening and exhibition of Traces is:
Saturday 12th September 2026. Doors 7pm, screening 7:30pm
Richard Demarco will attend the exhibition and film screening on Saturday 12th and the half-hour film will be followed by Q&A with Richard Demarco and Traces participants on the theme of The Artist as Pilgrim.
Venue address: Boardwalk Beach Club, 50 Marine Drive, Edinburgh EH4 5ES .
Those interested in supporting future showings are warmly invited to stay in touch.
Creative Roles | Traces
Rose Strang – Project lead, artist, producer, scriptwriter, narrator, music (voice)
Manuel Pennuto – co-producer, director of the Traces documentary, cinematographer, editor
Adam Brewster – camera, animation, Traces music arrangements (incl’ recorder and arrangement of Bryd one Brere)
Robert De Mey – writer
Jacob Olah – music (guitar)
With
Richard Demarco CBE – artist, writer, teacher; Director of the Demarco Gallery, Director and founder of the Demarco Archive Trust (Wikipedia | Demarco Archive)
Terry Ann Newman – artist, Director of the Demarco Archive Trust
Further Reading
Rose Strang: The Forest of Luffness – interview by Robert De Mey, Art-Scot
The Medieval Way of Seeing – essay by Rose Strang
Contact: rose.strang@gmail.com
Detail: Forest of Luffness 1. Oil on 30×30″ canvas. Rose Strang 2025
In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose. Robert Oppenheimer (1947 lecture “Physics in the Contemporary World”.)
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