Travel to anywhere, let alone the Mediterranean, hasn’t been on the cards for most people over the past 18 months.
However, thanks to a recently opened exhibition in Dundee, the influence of Italy can be experienced through art.
Impressions of Italy, which opened on July 24 at Gallery Q on Nethergate, runs until August 21.
Work featured includes ‘Jolomo’ John Lowrie Morrison OBE; Charles MacQueen RSW RGI; Christine Woodside RSW RGI; Jennifer Irvine RSW RGI; Mhairi McGregor RSW; Sandra Dickie; Cat Outram; Margaret Evans, Morag Muir RSW and Anne Skinner.
Gallery owner Lucinda Middleton says she is delighted to host the “wonderful exhibition featuring leading Scottish artists and their impressions of that beautiful country”.
Lucinda explains: “I was originally inspired to bring these artists together after seeing the beautiful paintings of Venice by Jean Martin RSW and then works by Mhairi McGregor RSW and by Charles MacQueen RSW RGI.
“I realised that Italy was a favourite subject for many of the artists whose work we show at the gallery and the exhibition was born.”
Variety of works
John Lowrie Morrison OBE – Jolomo – is one of Scotland’s most successful and best loved contemporary artists.
He’s been a painter for over 50 years of Argyll and the Hebrides, lighthouses, coastscapes, croftscapes and the people and light of the Scottish west coast.
His colourful work in this exhibition includes ‘Dawn breaks Isola Di San Michele Venice Lagoon’.
Charles MacQueen RSW RGI is a Glasgow-born artist based in Fife.
He is an acclaimed artist with many prestigious accolades including the Glasgow Civic Art Prize won in 1971 and the Torrance Award and Teacher’s Whisky Travel Award, both at the Royal Glasgow Institute.
His work in this exhibition includes Canal Window Venice.
Jennifer Irvine RSW RGI studied painting at Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1978.
She exhibits successfully throughout the UK and works full-time from her Glasgow studio.
Her subject matter includes townscape, seascape and still life.
Her large still life paintings are very involved with pattern and shape and she has become increasingly interested in the use of dramatic light and shade, as is evident of her oil paintings of French villages and Italian townscapes.
She draws on the effects of sunlight on an object, be it on a building or on water. Her work in this exhibition includes Venetian Moorings.
Glasgow-born Mhairi McGregor RSW studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1989 – 1993, gaining a BA (Hons) in Fine Art.
She has exhibited very widely in Scotland, in England and Australia.
While at art school she received a number of awards including one month working in Vetheuil, France, a Christie’s Bursary for third-year studies, Glasgow School of Art Landscape Drawing Prize for a sketchbook done in the open and a John Kinross Scholarship – three months working in Florence, Italy. Colosseum, Rome features in this exhibition.
The exhibition also features Dundee-based printmaker Anne Skinner who has recently gone back to painting.
A graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art where she studied drawing and painting under highly respected Scottish artists Alberto Morocco, Jack Knox and David McClure, she worked in further education as a lecturer in the fine art department at Dundee College teaching a wide variety of art and design subjects as well as continuing her practice as a visual artist.
Throughout her career Anne has been an exhibitor at major open exhibitions, and has exhibited widely in the UK as well as internationally. Her work is concerned with the “fragments of memories and images which remain in our minds, long after the experience has passed. Half remembered – Half forgotten”.
Meanwhile, Cat Outram is a fine art etcher based in Edinburgh.
A printmaker for roughly 40 years and a professional artist for 30 (1991), it’s mostly etchings she does.
“Mostly these are pictures of whatever strikes me, wherever I am,” she says.
“It’s light and shadow that I notice, tone and texture and patterns. I enjoy doing sets of images showing variations on a theme. Recently I have been making forays into abstraction, but, so far, this is about having fun! I don’t know where, if anywhere these’ll lead me.”
All work can be seen online at galleryq.co.uk
*Impressions of Italy, Gallery Q, Dundee, until August 21
