Our new Abstract exhibition features a diverse range of styles, including expressionism to photography - there's even some works that take inspiration from doodles.
You can catch the show at the studio from October 7-21. But in the meantime, here's a quick intro to each of our featured artists.
Joanna Wilson
Joanna Wilson’s art is a paradox of thoughtful drawing and exuberant expressionism. There is a lilting quality to her handling of form reminiscent of the rise and fall of her local Cromdales. But her figurative compositions incorporate decorative elements too, which seem to reference the urban settings of Edinburgh and London where she has also studied and worked. An award-winning artist of international acclaim, in 2022 she was featured by Saatchi Art Online. Her studio here in town is a hive of creativity, where you can usually find her multitasking (she is a mother of four), helping out a friend or ‘making a mess’.
Jess Greaves
Jess Greaves is a photographer with a clear focus on nature. She likes to use multiple exposures, digital and dark-room techniques, and alternative processes (often combined) to explore the inter-connectedness of humans and the natural world, our ancestral synergy with the earth, and our way onwards as these interactions are weakened and lost.
Aileen Neillie
Aileen Neillie is a graduate from Glasgow School of Art (1995), specialising in Sculptural Ceramics. Originally from the central belt, she has worked in the Highlands as a teacher and artist for over fourteen years.
Aileen works in 2D and 3D; both inform and enhance the other. There is great emphasis placed on concept and therefore the selection of materials plays a significant role in conveying the idea.
Having recently turned 50, in this series of works, Aileen has conveyed her experiences of aging and uses the human bones and body parts to depict the unstoppable effects of time. She abstracts the shapes and places emphasis on textures, similar to the surfaces found in her ceramic work. She plays with various materials, exploring their effects, allowing the creation of her work to be more natural and less hands off.
Raji Salan
Raji's varied arts education and practice has a cross disciplinary approach in the arts and sciences. Her collage practice enables her to research, collect and archive images from many sources that develop an intuitive approach to alternative methods of image making. She shares stories of her cultural heritage and other mythologies that turn into visual essays. Weaving the natural world, anatomy, and botany through her collages to explore the deeper connections with the world we inhabit. Observing it in detail, she sees the ordinary meet the extraordinary.
Her artworks have been exhibited at The Jerwood Drawing Prize 2010 and 2016 (London and UK tour), Household Name 2021 Elysium Gallery (Swansea), regularly exhibiting at Galeri and CARN (North Wales), Biosphere – Art, Animals and Environment 2022 Artstoheartsproject.com, Seeds Planting Art 2022 Artists For Plants and Svalbard Global Seed Vault, shortlisted for VAA international exhibition and scholarship prize 2023, and upcoming Plant Power Groundwork Gallery and solo show at Galeri in 2024.
Clare Blois
Clare Blois ran her own successful gallery in the Highlands before "retiring"
to concentrate on the development of her own work. She has won
several accolades including the prestigious JD Fergusson Arts Award, has
been an invited artist at the Discerning Eye Exhibition in London and
reached the final shortlist for the Highland Art Prize 2022 presented at the
National Mod. Clare works from her Wasps studio at Inverness Creative
Academy and “en plein air” when she can.
She said: “As an expressionist oil painter I have focused on Highland landscape for many years and am now concentrating my response to it into a more essential and instinctive language. New work also links my love of music to my painting as I become drawn into the vocabulary of abstraction. Whether inspired by landscape, music or even both, my objective is primarily for honesty in my work, making paintings that share the excitement of the ever new discoveries I make in the world around me."
Katie Ward
Katie Ward works primarily as a painter, but she also makes drawings and prints.
Ward’s pieces always push between abstraction and representation as she seeks to capture a sense of atmosphere and experience in pictorial terms. They are emotionally charged, and provoking, as her process is driven by the vigour of visual expression to reach a harmony state of colour, shape and texture. Nature is often the starting point, and exploring landscapes is an integral aspect of her practice.
Currently based in Nairn, Ward is a member of the local WASPS artist studios and her work can be found in galleries in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
Malcolm Tyson
Malcolm has returned to art later in life, and is currently using his imagination to created colourful and expressive doodle art. He says that inspiration can be drawn from a multitude of avenues in a split second and that he does not know what will happen next when he starts drawing. Having worked in many genres and mediums, doodling and wood carving have proved the most fulfilling art forms for Malcolm.
Abstract is open from October 7-21 and you can see the artworks on our website.
