Arran Visual Arts Exhibition
During Easter week, the Community Theatre at the High School was once again transformed into a highly varied art gallery, with a rich mixture of paintings, drawings and a wide variety of astonishingly skilled works of craft. It’s impossible to mention everyone who so richly deserves it, but a random selection follows, on the basis that each artist left something of value that will last long in the mind of the viewer.
Stephen Gill, painting on a larger scale than usual, has been exploring the craggy heights of Arran, looking out with great freshness to the air where eagles fly. Gaynor Harris. whose work is always interesting, catches something of the same sense of movement in her watercolours, Le Vent and Panache. Lesley McDowall is an artist of great honesty and quiet observation, whose work has something of Lowry’s appeal, showing people going about their business in a village or small town that somehow fits them properly, with none of the overwhelming commercialism of today’s strident shopping centres.
Phil Holmes is an artist of broad talents, and shows paintings of very different kinds. His Indigo Peaks is, as the name suggests, a study of deep-toned mountain tops, seen with an eye to the way their abstract shapes form a strong pattern – and yet, his North Sannox Burn is utterly different. This painting is full of delicate detail and evokes the spring sunlight filtering through branches putting out new green shoots. Ronnie McNeice, too, is feeling his way towards a different form of expression. Two of his current pictures have abandoned his usual firm construction for looser brushwork. In these, a swirling evocation of wind and weather evokes the massive sweep of Turner’s still-astonishing landscapes. Think of his Rain, Steam and Speed that showed an embattled locomotive adding its own cloud to a torrent of overwhelming weather, and you are close to the new McNeice style.
Ruth Yates has long been one of the most diverse and inventive artists on Arran, and in this exhibition she shows a new certainty in her various techniques. Her Cottage in the Storm was boldly seen, with high colour in spite of the beleaguered state of things, yet in complete contrast, her Winter Crocus at Kew was perceptively seen, both in detail and as a joyful patterning of natural form.
There was some impressive photography, particularly from David Hogg, whose large print of the Waverley heading straight towards the viewer packed a great punch. Howard Walker achieved an equally knock-out effect with his stunning study of reflected light in Lamlash Dawn.
I must admit to a particular affection for works of fine craft. Janel Nichol’s wonderful shopping bags woven from jute are delectable, and Lucy Cartledge showed equally beguiling products. Who could imagine anything more inviting to chilly feet that her knitted slipper socks made of handspun wool? Ruth Mae showed two of her amazingly alive wire horses, plus a delectable bowl turned from holly wood – and David Samuels, who produces masterly furniture and musical instruments, also showed a Spotty Dog toy that galloped when you pressed its supporting clothes peg. And that, for me at least, was irresistible. Reader, I bought it.
