Exhibition Events:

‘Dialogue with the Land’ is finally up and running in the beautifully refurbished Burgh Halls in Linlithgow.

Combining some landscape works from 2009 with a new set of Linlithgow watercolours, it sits very happily in a 17th century space which is as much window as wall, looking out to the land, the town and the Palace.

A great place for a day out, by train (20 minutes from Edinburgh 29 minutes from Glasgow) or bike along the canal path…

Winter Pinks and the Giant Beech

‘Mono-print’ at Glasgow Print Studio Gallery is a survey of the contemporary practice of the unique print form, curated by John MacKechnie, opening on May 20th.  Some of my new Beijing inspired prints will be seen alongside new work by John Byrne, Eileen Cooper, Bruce Maclean, Barbara Rae & Adrian Wiszniewski, amongst others.

After years of exploring and experimenting in this media as a key part of my own practice, I am very excited by the new developments of mono-etching and chine collé within the print. Come and see my largest print ever, made on the beautiful Takach press at the Glasgow Print Studio.

Evening, Beijing (with artist’s feet for scale)

‘Bridging the Gap’. As one of the invited artists in the Pittenweem Arts Festival 2011, I have been creating a new series of colour-field abstract prints with Alastair Clark at Edinburgh Print Workshop, which will become a key part of my civil engineering installation destined for the old Town Hall in Pittenweem from August 5th to 14th.

The installation will feature a collection of large charcoal drawings made over the past ten years across this country, many never before exhibited, as well as a 2011 Forth Rail Bridge work to commemorate 25 years of drawing the Bridge.

Bridging the Gap Studio Work in progress, photo by Michael Wolchover

‘Landfall’ will be a collection of small spiritual paintings at The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh from the 5th-29th October. Landfall’s literal meaning is ‘the first sighting of the land after voyage by sea or air’. I seek to capture that sense of a ‘first sighting’ wonder of the land in this new body of works. There will be some quiet journeying with paint over the next few months to complete this new body of work on canvas.

Landscape in the Studio, photo by Fereuse Macdonald

Drawing Attention is the subject title for this year’s Cupar Arts Festival 2011 between 8-18th October. I have been invited to perform a drawing (with projections and live drawing action) as one of the evening events at this terrific Fife festival. The working title is Brief Encounters. Imagine it as part B&W post-war film homage, part melodrama, and a huge quantity of charcoal.

Finally….

Around the 16th of October I will be flying out to China for ten weeks. Embarking on a 47 hour 28 minute train journey from Beijing to Lhasa in Tibet to make a very long ink painting, followed by journeys around some of China’s incredible landscapes, I will hopefully be meeting with some master ink painters whose work I have long studied and admired. From November 1st I will be part of the Red Gate Gallery’s International Residency Programme in Beijing until the end of the 2011. Exhibitions and projects will follow but that is a story for another year…