“…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
Introduction
On a June morning in 2024, a group of artists, friends and family travelled to the Forest of Luffness in East Lothian.
Within the forest lie the remains of a medieval Carmelite friary. A broken arch still stands, and beneath it the stone effigy of a crusader, worn by time almost beyond recognition.
Artist Rose Strang had visited the forest before and invited others to return with her, among them Richard Demarco CBE, then in his ninety-third year.
Traces is the work that emerged from that day: a 25-minute documentary film and a series of paintings. Together, they respond to the forest, the friary, and what survives across time; in landscape, in stone, and in the human capacity for both destruction and reconciliation.
Screening and exhibition of Traces
Film screenings: Friday 21st, Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd August at 2 to 3pm.
Richard Demarco will attend the film screening on Sunday 23rd and the half-hour film will be followed by Q&A with Richard Demarco and Traces participants.
Exhibition open to the public daily from 12 noon to 4pm Weds 19th to Sat 22nd August.
Venue address: Boardwalk Beach Club, 50 Marine Drive, Edinburgh EH4 5ES .
Those interested in supporting future showings are warmly invited to stay in touch.
Traces | Film Trailer
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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